Jay Feldman  0:00  
Welcome to the first episode of a brand new podcast called The bioenergetic view. This is a podcast featuring myself, Mike, fave, who you already know from the energy balance podcast, and also Danny Roddy. We recorded these episodes a little while back, and we're really excited to share all of them with you now. So let us know what you think. We're really looking forward to hearing all of your feedback. And with that, we're going to jump into the first episode.

Danny  0:23  
Okay, welcome to a bioenergetic view, a podcast with myself, Jay Feldman, and Mike Fave and second time is the charm. And let's explain while, while why we are here and what we are going to be molding this podcast into. Jay, take it away.

Jay Feldman  0:41  
Yeah. So we wanted to have a different show for to provide a different format, to provide information through, or just to share in different sorts of information. You know, in in our current podcast that each of us have and channels, we tend to get into depth with the physiology, get into research. And while that's great, it's not attainable for a lot of people, and it's also just heavy, and if someone wants to understand the basics, it's hard for them to get started with those things. So we wanted to have a platform to share some more basic things, as far as the bioenergetic view goes tips and tricks and keep things simple and practical. And then we'll also be taking a decent amount of time talking through how our perspective differs from others, and sharing pieces of media from other people, and explaining why we agree or disagree and what our opinions are, with the hope of that being also a way to learn. I mean, most of the questions that all of us get are on some conflicting view. You know, they'll mention that somebody else said this thing. What do you think about that? How does that fit into the bioenergetic view? What does what does this mean? What do we make of that? And so that's the purpose here, is to answer those types of things, and ideally also to have discussions with people, to have guests on, and possibly guests that we don't fully agree with, possibly, you know, people who you know, we'll talk about some of their content. Maybe they'll come on and discuss it with us, and also as a way to kind of further learning and and, yeah, dig into the bioenergetic view in a more appetizing way. Appetizing? Yeah,

I agree. I echo everything Jay just said, and one of the key aspects of this show was to try to keep it moving, moving along, not getting too in depth, in the weeds. And that's why we we've segmented it like around the internet, a basic segment talking about, probably like today we're going to talk about what is stress, and then we also have a tips, tips and tricks segment, and then bad takes. And so we'll try to move things along and not get too stuck into to any one thing. And Mike, do you want to explain our context real fast? Because I think that is different from a lot of people in the health world, because you don't really know what they believe causes good health, and you don't really know what they believe causes bad health, and it's kind of elusive, and it's ever changing, you know? And I think the bioenergetic perspective is grounded in the idea of real metabolic energy promoting good health, and there's real ways to promote that and inhibit that. And so do you want to talk about that for a second? Yeah,

Mike  3:10  
Yeah, I think that. I think that the difference here, so the first thing is that this, this podcast that we're going to be doing, is going to be making things, As Jay mentioned, more appetizing or more digestible. We're not. It's not to but not, not about getting to the weeds. It's not about digging in depth into studies and all of these different components. It's really talking about applicable, implementable things that people can do right now and then, talking about the current events and things that are going on that people want to hear about. Because we, I think all three of us get asked endless numbers of times about, what do you think about this new thing in the health sphere, like, for example, today, like Brian Johnson's crazy, like routine that he does on a regular basis. And it's kind of difficult to answer those questions on Danny channel on generative energy, because, you know, the channel's not set up around that specifically. I mean, there's some discussion, but it's, it's, you don't really want to get too much into that, because you guys are going through studies and talking about different things that Georgie is doing and whatnot. And then for the podcast that Jay and I do, the energy balance podcast, we're really trying to talk about, what are the mechanisms of different things, and then what, for example, fatty liver series or or the another one that will be coming out soon, or that just came out, was about thyroid so like really digging into those pieces and talking about the research, what's going on and and the tips you can do from there. And then, even for my own channel, it's like mechanisms, research mechanisms. So there's not really a place that you can come in, the bioenergetics fear, where it's casual, it's fun. It's kind of like a variety show, the a bunch of different things that are a bit entertaining, but also providing value to people. So we wanted to create the first the the first podcast like that for this particular niche, for this particular sphere, and something that makes this sphere so special or so important is that it actually has some unifying view, which is. Raise hypothesis that energy and structure interdependent on every level. That allows us to look at things through this lens and this view is, I think, overall, compared to the other views that we tend to see, it's much more comprehensive. It's much more holistic. It can answer a variety of different problems and questions in a unified manner, instead of looking at things from the perspective, oh, carbs are just a problem, or Oh, animal foods are just a problem. Or is this evolutionarily consistent? Right? These, these other, these other frames, or premises that some of these other areas come from, are not very complete frames, whereas the bioenergetic frame is relatively complete and taking multiple things into perspective. And so, yeah, I think that will be the frame of which we're going to look through all this different types of content, and we're going to break things down and it understanding things from a holistic perspective, as everybody will see today, is going to be really important when we start to talk about some of the problems with reductionism that we're seeing, and things like the regimen that I hinted at before, like the Brian Johnson regimen, or things like that. So, yeah, that's the, I think, the frame and the context of which we're going to come out for this show. And I don't know, I know you guys are excited. I'm excited to jump in and and start making some, some more of these episodes, and start doing some, like, more casual and fun types of things.

Danny  6:21  
Jay, anything to add?

Jay Feldman  6:24  
No, no, let's let's get into it. Okay,

Speaker 1  6:27  
okay, so our first article in the around the internet section is talking about Bryan Johnson and his in his routine. And like we said a few times earlier, I think he's a marketing genius. He's really inhabited the consciousness of many different health people, and I and I think it's because, like we all know, in the health world, like extremes really attract people. And he, he's really taken biohacking to another level, way more so than his peers. And so what is there to learn about Bryan Johnson, what can we extract from

Mike  7:02  
him? I would say that the the first thing that I see because I've had quite a few, quite a few clients, and people reach out to me and ask me, What do I think about what he's doing? The first thing that I see is it just, I don't, I don't see this as very practical for like, the average person, right in terms of like, in terms of time, in terms of money, in terms of energy, to go about and do all these different things is a huge lift. And I feel like most people won't be able to do this. So even if this was the best way to go, which we're gonna make arguments, is against like, against that idea. It's, it's just not practical to implement. And so a lot of times, like, if I'm working with somebody, the first question that I'm actually thinking about is not, what is the best plan is, what is the plan that is implementable? Because if you can't follow something, then doesn't matter what you have written on paper or or anything along those lines. And this is just, I mean, this is another level, the amount of testing, the amount of supplements, how things are repaired, like, it's just it, yeah, it's really an attention to some of the details. Are some of the things great, like the super low heavy metal organic chocolate that, or, like, the really high quality olive oil, yeah, those things that attention to detail, all that is great. But a lot of some of the other components are not, are like, I think, very difficult for the common person. And not saying that, I'm not trying to strong man Bryan Johnson here and say that he was trying to promote it to that perspective, because that's not his ultimate goal. But just like with when people, when people ask me, When clients ask me, it's like, even if this was the best thing, it's just, it's not something that could be implementable. The other thing I want to say is, Well, I think there's some things that are in his paradigm, or his setup here that are quite ridiculous, from like, a logical perspective, not from a judgmental perspective, from like, my understanding of the research, I think that there's some things that are also, I think are fine, and I think that are like, not that problematic to do on a regular basis, or a supplement, or some of the foods that really aren't that bad and are likely beneficial. So I do want to frame it that way. It's not like every single thing he's doing is bad or is just completely counter to the some of the things within the bioenergetic sphere. It's more of like a mixed bag of things. And some are like, really counter to the ideas, and then some are not really that far off. So just really to, we're going to, we're only going to cover diet and supplements here, and we'll get into it, but we can't get into everything else. We don't want to spend two hours just on that, but I want to put that frame there so that it's not a his all of this stuff is bad automatically. That's not what I'm saying. I don't think that's what either of you guys are saying either. But correct me if I'm wrong,

Speaker 1  9:42  
yeah, before we get into his dining supplements, I just he has some mixture of philosophy surrounding the rate of living theory and and so I think that's important to understand, because the rate of living stuff is polar opposite of the bioenergetic stuff, like the elevator pitch for the bioenergetic stuff is mimicking the metabolism of a child. Child, and he's like, mimicking the metabolism of, like, an aging, old adult, and so like that

Mike  10:06  
Greenland shark, right? That's like, as, like, super low body temperature and lives, like 400 years old, or something

Danny  10:12  
exactly, exactly what I was thinking of, yeah. Okay, Jay, well,

Jay Feldman  10:18  
and just talking about the reason why it's such a mixed bag is because his routine and his perspective is a conglomeration of different reductionist ideas. I mean, that's essentially what biohacking is. Is you see this study that shows this compound providing this benefit, so you use that, and then you see this other study, or this other conglomeration of studies, showing this modality that provides this benefit, and you just throw them all together, and there's no unifying theory. There's no larger context of physiology. And with that, it's really hard to delineate what is accurate and what's not accurate, and so you end up with a hodgepodge of of ideas and modalities. And we'll dig into, of course, where some of our disagreements are with this, and how a lot of them do conflict with the bioenergetic view. So I think that's important to consider as well as is the the lack of larger, cohesive perspective, and that's how you get stuck in the rabbit hole of using resveratrol because of David Sinclair's research, which then turned out to really not be valid at all. You know, you get you end up, or how you end up, using estrogen, despite the 70 plus years of it, failing as as a successful or failing as a medication or as a drug to provide any benefit. So we'll dig into all those things. But I think that's an important larger perspective. The last thing I want to mention before we dig into the details is just as a disclaimer, when we're talking about anybody else's perspective here, we're always doing this in trying to do this in a constructive way, to describe our disagreements or agreements with what their perspective is or what's being shared. And we're always happy to have these people on, discuss these things with them, and ideally have a productive discussion that way too. So just wanted to throw that out there as well. Got it?

Mike  11:52  
Yeah, as long as they're not disrespectful, we don't want a repeat of the Randall cycle situation.

Jay Feldman  11:57  
We'll see. I don't care if people call his names. Maybe that makes for a good show, too.

Danny  12:03  
I mean, I call you guys a lot of names, so yeah, that's true.

Mike  12:07  
People knew what you said about us when we were off air. Danny, that's

Speaker 1  12:10  
true. I'm like, a tiring podcast. Okay, so let me throw some numbers at you guys. So one thing wait before you,

Mike  12:16  
before you jump into that. There is one thing that I did want to cover, just quickly, and there's something, it's more of a mental framework and less of like an implementation or something. But the question is, what does it actually take for health, and what does it actually take for longevity and things along those lines? And I think for most people, the threshold is not, is not this, like you don't have to do all this to be healthier, achieve, like, certain outcomes to your health or longevity in your life. And if you look at the the people who have actually lived a long time because this guy hasn't, they are not doing this. Now that doesn't mean that this isn't optimal. It that that doesn't automatically invalidate this idea. But at the same time, like it does, show you that the bar that is required is doesn't to live to like, a long, long age, by current standards, doesn't have to be all these crazy things that that he's doing overall. And a lot of times it's really not even as in depth as what people are average people are doing inside the bio hacking spheres. So I think it's important to understand, like, to have that frame of context, like, what is your ultimate goal? When he's taught, he his ultimate goal here, and his preamble is discussing, like, pushing the boundaries of science and longevity and youth and all this type of stuff. So he's his goal is in a relatively lofty goal, and he's going about it in extreme way, which fine, because that his goal is, is towards the extreme side, and extreme relative to like the normal person. So I want to put that context here that I don't think the argument is here is like, this is what's needed to be healthy, or anything like that. I think this is that's not what we're talking about. It's what do we actually think about what he's doing from a contextual basis?

Danny  14:05  
Got it right. What

Jay Feldman  14:06  
do we think about this as a possible optimal strategy, if you're going to throw millions of dollars at it and use all the technology, is this the way to go? I think that's the question, right? Because, as you're saying, Mike, he's not framing this as, here's what the everyday man should do. He's saying, Let's push those boundaries. Let's use all every resource possible, and this is what you get. And what we're going to kind of get at is that I don't think that's what we would do with those sort of resources. That's not the direction we would go. And that doesn't mean that the pursuit of optimal is not a good pursuit, by all means. I may think that's a great pursuit, but we don't think this is the way to do it. And most, most of the things, as you said, it's a mixed bag. Some things we agree with, some things we don't.

Speaker 1  14:43  
So yeah, like living at 10,000 feet with a truckload of turmoils, would probably be a better strategy. Okay, so by the numbers, he's eating 1977 calories per day. He's 20 negative, 24% caloric restriction. He's a vegan, 70 pounds. Of veggies monthly, and he takes 100 pills per day. So what is there to learn from that?

Jay Feldman  15:06  
Yeah, well, just to start, I mean, the 24% calorie restriction is a lot like that is a huge percentage of calorie restriction in most of the research, when they are doing it in rats and whatnot. I think normally the numbers 20% that's a pretty big number. And with that to be, in this case, so 24% we're looking at a normal diet. For him, he's saying it's like 2700 or whatever, 2600 and so to be in a like 700 calorie deficit, so to speak, on a day to day basis, and not be continually losing weight that so, so, I mean, we can dig into the rate of living theory in a second, but going through this through another avenue, if you're in a major deficit like that, and you're not losing tissue that is coming at a major cost to other organ functions. So there's Mike and I have talked about Herman pontzer constrained model of energy expenditure, where the assumption is that you can just create deficits and deficits and deficits, and it'll just all come from your body fat. But what actually happens is then it degrades your reproductive function, it degrades your brain function, it degrades your digestive function, degrades your tissues in all sorts of ways, like there's no you don't you can't just eat less and take in less fuel and still come out with the same outcome, which is probably why he would need to use all sorts of different hormones to optimize his hormones and whatnot. And we'll dig into all that, because what he's doing in the very basic foundation is inherently damaging and not conducive to longevity or optimal function. So that's just a starting place, which I think is as bad as it can get, is a 25% calorie restriction on a day to day basis. And the other piece of this too is that the rate of living theory is not accurate, and it's not like in the research, it's not considered to be accurate either. I mean, this is we're talking about something that was a built out of the fun, the view of the Industrial Revolution, where our bodies are machines and they just wear down over time, so we have to use them less to live longer, and it's no longer considered viable at all in the research that, being said, caloric restriction is still considered to be beneficial in the research, it's just not through rate of living theory. But again, without digging into that research, the short answer is that research does not hold up at all. You have things where, in in C elegans, which is one of the main organisms, that's research for caloric restriction, there's not actual legitimate extension and health span. It just goes into hibernation for an extended period of time. So it looks like improved lifespan. When it comes to rat research, you have things like caloric restriction versus the ad libitum feeding, where the ad libitum rats are extremely overweight and sick and die early, and the caloric restriction doesn't actually provide benefit. I mean, just like the research behind the caloric restriction improving longevity is heavily flawed, and so I think that's already a flawed starting point that you will come to if you're in this biohacking sphere of just trying to look at the outcome without the larger perspective. Isn't

Speaker 1  17:53  
it? Anti keys, is starvation studies, isn't it? Minnesota, it wasn't it like, 1700 calories that caused them to induce psychosis and, like, self mutilation.

Jay Feldman  18:06  
I think it was 1800s about 1800 Yes, yeah. So,

Danny  18:10  
I mean, that really speaks volumes about, uh, eating this little but what we're gonna say, like,

Mike  18:15  
the other thing I was gonna say is, like, the the rat research that showed benefits that JRD discussed having issues with ad libitum versus restricted didn't actually play out inside the Primate Research. So inside the Primate Research, basically, if you took the primates and you you like, this was monkeys, rhesus monkeys, and you put them under caloric restriction when they were younger, they actually didn't live longer. They actually died earlier than the monkeys who went into caloric restriction when they were older overall. And then there wasn't actually, like a change in lifespan in monkeys who were calorically restricted on a more normal diet versus the basic lab diet. And so this, this brings into question, is it just restricting calories that is actually providing the benefit and the increase in lifespan. If rate of living theory isn't the isn't like the determinant, or isn't the mechanism by which, by which caloric restriction is working to increase lifespan, and we're seeing these weird, semi paradoxical elements inside the caloric restriction research, then I think it's unlikely that just dropping calories is what's inducing the the benefit or the improved lifespan for these organisms. I think it's probably not eating as much garbage and then because a lot just to as a cavity or as a some basis here, most of the caloric restriction studies in rats and primates use the like hottest garbage diets, you can use like sucrose, dextrose, soybean oil, corn oil, and then like Whole Foods primate diet, it was like soybean meal and corn meal and things like that. So it's not a whole foods diet. It's still garbage, like it's not things that the the monkeys would typically eat. Eat. So I think the question is, like they just ate less garbage so they got less sick over the course of their lifespan, and the calories wasn't wasn't a thing. And since you don't have the relationship showing in the rats with the rhesus monkeys, I think the extension from rhesus monkeys to then humans would be even more questionable as far as the implications, especially, especially because the energetic processes in humans, I think, are a bit more demanding. Consider our central nervous system functions and whatnot. Then on top of that, there are actually problems with caloric restriction in human research. So when they have, there's like groups of people, I think they're called the cronies, and they do caloric restriction. Basically, they have, there's a variety of hormonal aberrations that occur, which Jay kind of touched on. So, I mean, I guess doesn't matter if you have hormonal aberrations, if you can just plug away testosterone, DHEA, large doses of transdermal estrogen and whatnot on a regular basis. But they have, like, bone problems. There's some hormonal issues and things along those lines that make it questionable, as if it's a good long term strategy, it's not very clear overall. The next piece I want to mention is that his diet is probably even less calories than his show. And the reason why I say that is because he's eating like really hard to digest foods on a regular basis, in conjunction with adding something called a carbos, which blocks carbohydrate absorption in his with his meals. So he's eating like, really hard to digest, grain based, or legume, not grain based, legume based products and nuts and seeds that have components in them that inhibit digestion. And then he's taking something to and further inhibit the carbohydrate ingestion. So then he also doesn't have a high amount of quality protein either. I mean, it's, it's mostly plant based protein. It seems to be balanced. I can't see the amino acid ratios, but it seems to be balanced because he tends to have, like, some types of nuts and seeds with the legumes. But it's, they're not high quality protein, they're not super digestible. So the rest of his, the most of his diet is actually coming in from a higher fat intake, and a lot of it is actually PUFA. So it's a weird, calorically restricted, borderline low carb, not so high in protein, high PUFA diet. It's like a very weird mixture for diet. And it's, it's not entirely vegan because he uses collagen, but it's like, mostly vegan. So from a perspective, there's, like, a lot of problems with the ideologies that are functioning here, and then this, I think the supplement regimen, if we dig into that, is like trying to correct for these problems. It's like he's taking iron, he's taking B 12, he's taking zinc, he's like he's taking a bunch of things to correct for the fact that his diet does doesn't solve for those things, or at least that's my assumption, right? He's not explicitly saying that, at least that's what I'm assuming based on looking at the supplement

Jay Feldman  22:50  
regimen. Jay how to mention the testosterone The thyroid is using, the Metformin is using, so you've got, like, the hormonal replacement, because his basic framework is something that is going to destroy that hormonal profile. And he's using a ton of other things that'll probably, you know, go to lengths to keep stress hormones down to the extent that's possible in DHEA and whatnot, and then ashwagandha and things like that. But then also you've got Metformin. So talking about not using the carbs that are coming in, it's a great point Mike that, yes, he might be eating around 2000 calories, but not absorbing a huge amount of that. Most of its indigestible, the carbohydrates aren't going to be absorbed because of the a carbohys as well. I mean, there's just a number of things here, and we'll get into those as we get to the supplements. But, yeah, do you want to go What was the second part there? Danny after his caloric restriction?

Speaker 1  23:37  
So measurements of blood, stool, saliva, you're an MRI ultrasound, other and so what I mean, what would we favor in replacement of Well, obviously, a lot of these things are not accessed, like everyday type of measurement, but I guess, what would we favor instead of these things?

Jay Feldman  23:55  
Yeah, well, so there's two things I want to mention. Also, just the vegan and 70 plus pounds of veggies. I think we've got a good example here of, again, a biohacking perspective, where I don't know what his ideology is behind the veganism, because, as you pointed out, Mike he has to do a lot of things to make up for the lack of nutrients there. I don't know if it's an ethical one, but regardless, obviously I think we would say it's coming from a pretty flawed perspective. And as you said, Mikey is still having collagen as well. But I don't think I would be considering the 70 pounds of veggies a month is a good thing. Again, we're building off of these reductionist assumptions, 100 pills daily. Again, talking about this is something I know. Danny, you've talked about a lot. I know Ray talked about a lot. The more supplements you take, the more chance of contamination, the more chance of all sorts of issues. And we'll talk about that as we can do supplements too, but just some quick, well, they're not

Mike  24:42  
even like the best quality supplements either. So like, I'm sure some of them have like, different excipients, flow agents, whatever else in there. And then something you want to mention is, like, say, the theoretical idea behind doing a vegan diet was to lower certain amino acids. He. Supplementing with n acetyl cysteine. So it's like, Sure, maybe you lower methionine a bit, but you're still having a decent cyst intake from supplementing pure, essentially pure cysteine. So I think that there's like, there's a couple things that are like, and that's, this is a part of that reduction, reduction, reductionistic element, right? So if I was to break down and say, like, the some of the biggest problems that I see when I look at this diet, first of all, it's the veganism piece that we mentioned. So you have a bunch of hard to digest foods. For most like, his diet would bloat me up and I probably not feel well at all. I know a lot of people would also have the same response. His nutrient density is maybe his density is okay, but considering the diet, the food matrix that he has on that food, plus the different components that inhibit absorption, I would say nutrient density isn't actually that great overall, plus he's lacking some nutrients because he's running a largely vegan diet. Um, the protein quality is poor. I mean, you can combine beans and and grains and beans and nuts and seeds together and whatnot, and you'll get a complete amino acid profile, but it's still not the most digestible, absorbable form of protein, and they still tend to lack other sources of amino acids. Plus he's supplementing with amino acids that were restricted in the amino acid restriction studies for longevity. So I don't even know if that was, like, the rationale behind that perspective, um, and the other thing is, just like, I'm not surprised that he's doing okay on almost 2000 calories a day, because with the amount of volume that he has in the diet, like, I don't even know how you have, you have room to eat more. Like, if it's, if it's 70 pounds of veggies. What was that a month plus what? I don't know, whatever else. I don't know if that veggies incorporates all the legumes and nuts and stuff like that, between bloating and the amount of times that have to go to the bathroom, I don't know if I would like want to eat more. So I think that, in and of itself, is problematic from the vegan perspective. The other thing I'm seeing there is like they talk about rate of living theory, and they we mentioned that, or we're assuming that's the perspective. But what about membrane pacemaker theory, and then running like a high PUFA, high fat diet? So he's he's pushing fat oxidation. He's pushing pushing higher PUFA intake. The other thing he was also using HDH, which he had to stop due to side effects, which is further driving fat oxidation, which, based on some of the things we're talking about, is probably not ideal for long term health. And the other last one is that he's has, like, non existent sodium intake. Now, I don't know his full sodium intake because I can't see the complete chronometer, but he doesn't solve his food to taste. And then, if you ever set up a whole foods diet like this. There's basically zero or very, very minimal sodium, if any at all. So there's, like, a there's quite a few issues with plus, I don't think the calcium intake is super high, but I know he's supplementing calcium, I just don't know what the dosage is. So those are, like the right off the bat, like, I think those are pretty significant problems with the diet, but there is some things that he does get right, right. So, like high quality foods, he's not using a bunch of garbage, industrial foods that have a problematic components, even though supplements, like we have excipients, he does have a decent fruit intake. And then some of the vet Well, some of the vegetables are problematic, but some of them are also fine. And then some of the spices are problematic, but some of them are fine. And then as far as, like, fiber and polyphenolic content, I think that some of those things are actually beneficial, maybe not 70 pounds a month, but some of it is beneficial. So there's some things right, but there's like, a couple things wrong, and definitely not how I would go about using or constructing my diet to live a long time, or at least to enjoy the life that I had on a regular basis.

Danny  28:43  
I'm incredulous that his digestion is good. I don't believe that you can take this many pills and have good digestion. And yeah, he kind of did not. When I typed in bowel function on his website, it didn't really say anything about bowel movements. But I would guess, since we know that his body temperature is so low that he's either horribly constipated or is having splatter diarrhea from taking these supplements, that would be my well,

Jay Feldman  29:08  
not to mention the supplements, but medications like Acarbose that inhibit starch absorption, you don't just like it sounds like it disappears. What that means is so first off, the side effects for that are all digestive related, and they're massive, and it's part of like, one of the biggest concerns with using it, and he's using so first off, to consume any starchy food intentionally, and then intentionally take a drug for type two diabetes to impair starch absorption. Is such an odd idea. Why would you ever do that? And then what happens when you don't absorb the starch is it then goes and feeds bacteria, which you don't want. You don't want massive amounts of starch heading to your colon. You want to be absorbing that. So forget all of the anti nutrients, the starch inhibitors that are already in the nuts and seeds and grains. Forget all the protein digest, you know, protein digesting, enzyme inhibitors that are in all the nuts, seeds and grains. You're then taking a drug to further do. That. I mean, there's no way he could have any sort of comfortable or good digestion at all. It's, it's ludicrous. Foreman, right? Which will, which will as well. So there was a couple other things I wanted to to come back to something you said earlier, Mike, but I guess I'm sure it'll come back up. Do you want to go back through the like? Go? Measurements thing? I think that you were about to bring up a good point, Danny, as far as you know, it might be good to have some blood, stool, saliva, urine tests. But I would a be, you know, secondarily, I would be really careful about all the radiation based measurements and testing, which I don't know what all he's using. You mentioned, just MRI and ultrasound. But the other thing is, as you were kind of getting at you can a much better measure of how you're doing in many ways, or in conjunction with these, is going to be how you feel on the day to day basis, how your digestion is, what other symptoms are you having? Where is your body temperature at? And I think, you know, of course, we're making some assumptions here, because we don't actually know how he feels day to day. Maybe he can come on and we can talk about it, but I think we're assuming that those things would not suggest that he's in an optimal state. So I think that was a great point, and I don't know if we want to go on and talk about some of the other aspects of his routine. Well,

Danny  31:18  
it's really like the health and how he feels is removed from himself. It seems like it's like, I'm gonna use all these markers to tell me how I feel, rather than just confronting how you actually feel every day. You know,

Jay Feldman  31:29  
it's a great point. And he's got, I don't know if it's like a software background or some sort of, some sort of tech background. That's how he made his hundreds of millions. And it's very much that perspective, right? It's the future of medicine being AI medicine, where you just get all these tests and it reads your numbers and tells you how your health is, right? It's about as far as you can get. And it's, I mean, it's like this dystopian version of the and I know all of us had this with our clients, where they walk into their doctor, the doctor looks at the labs and says, Oh, you're fine. Your thyroid is fine, whatever else. These things are optimal, just like Bryan Johnson's, but they're feeling absolutely terrible, and they walk away feeling unheard, and feeling like, obviously, this is not actually getting to what is underlying, what actually is going on. Physiologically, we're making all these assumptions and extrapolations. I mean, it's the perfect example of reductionism that is the the exact basis for this whole blueprint.

Danny  32:24  
Well, as Broda Barnes's quote, it's like you can learn more about a patient with a temperature like a thermometer than you can with all the expensive blood tests. You know, yeah, do we want to get talk about this, or get into his lab work? Or what do you guys want to talk

Mike  32:38  
about? I think the the next thing would be supplements. Um, that's like the next big area. If you go on to the left bar there, it says diet and supplement. Sanny, go all the way to the left.

Yeah. These are just

Danny  32:51  
screenshots. I'm on his site right now. Oh,

Mike  32:57  
website, yeah, gotcha. And then, if then, now you can, yeah, you can, yeah, you can see this opens there.

Danny  33:03  
Yeah, taking these on an stomach. What was that? I love to know how digestion is. Sorry, I

Jay Feldman  33:12  
remember the thing real quick. Mike, you were talking about how maybe he was going vegan to restrict certain amino acids. He's taking the Amino he's taking some sort of Amino complex. It's mentioned in his diet, and that upon waking the Green Giant, he has an amino complex which has things like methionine in it, and tryptophan and cysteine. So I don't if that was the reason for his veganism. As you said, it doesn't line up. And it's also, again, this product of the reductionism, where, yes, we know that methionine can be an issue, but you can offset that with glycine, and you can still consume, you know, typical, you can consume a diet in a way that is not going to have massive amounts of methionine. And we think that you should do that. You should avoid methionine. But I don't think it's as you're kind of getting at, or as we're saying. It's not a good reason to go vegan.

Mike  33:59  
Yeah, it's also, you'd have to really restrict methionine to a heavy amount to even get that longevity benefit that you're seeing inside the rat studies. Anyway. So with huge side effects, yes, with significant size side effects overall. So I mean, it's not, I don't think a lot of this, some of the strategies are really tenable, especially, or particularly in the long term. The other thing I wanted to come back to and just mention is like the idea of having to rely on all these tests and different components to get a sense of how you are as part continuation of the idea of constantly outsourcing everything to some type of authority figure, right? And I think that instead of taking self responsibility and like relying on your own responses and adjusting from there, you have to give it to some sort of other system that will make the determination for you. And I think that principle alone, in and of itself, for a lot of people, is actually directly counter to them developing their own health. Because at least for me, the best experiences that I've had in terms of. Doing my own health was going based off my symptoms and how I felt with something. And this is why I think we pick on the supplements so much. Is like, all of these supplements, I'm sure, have like 10 studies or more behind them that say it does this, Does that, does this, does that, and then. But the problem is, is like, and I'm sure you guys have seen this as well with a lot with a client, you can give them taurine. You can say, Here, take tour, and then they can have a bunch of terrible digestive symptoms from it. And it's like, regardless of what the studies say about taurine, who cares if you have if you're having terrible digestive symptoms from it, then it like that. Why would you take it that does that's not improving the circumstance overall, unless there's, there's some specific element why and you can correct that. So I, I think that for and even for the for the average, common person, setting up something simple where you can get a gage of what are the for example, for me, my digestion is one of the number one things that I I deal with. So I will keep an eye on how my digestion is doing when I use certain things and then use that kind of as a gage so you can develop that, and you don't have to get an MRI every month, or you don't have to do like an ultrasound or this or that every month. Now, as far as the as far as the supplement perspective, we kind of already talked about the like fillers, excipients, flow agents, the problematic things we talked about like using a carbos and metformin with really hard to digest carbohydrates, but he's also on high dose iodine, plus the brocco Max, which is a broccoli supplement, plus genistein, good.

Danny  36:33  
Why don't I launch some supplements at you guys, and we can get your quick takes so and I'll keep things going. But

Mike  36:40  
what I was gonna say is I group those together, because all of those things have a negative impact on thyroid function. And then he's taking thyroid, so it's like, I'm hypothyroid. He said he's since he's 21 fine, but it's like I'm hypothyroid, so I'm taking thyroid, but then I'm going to take a bunch of things that are probably not that great for your thyroid kit. So it's like this, that's part of the reductionistic perspective. And I guess perhaps the idea is like, if I'm using thyroid, then it doesn't matter anymore. I don't know if that's where, where the idea is coming from. Well, and

Jay Feldman  37:12  
he's taking estrogen and then taking testosterone. I mean, he's taking, yeah, it's all conflicting. Higher

Mike  37:18  
dose estrogen than testosterone, right? I think it was like, the testosterone was 12 milligrams a week, and then the estrogen was four grams a week. But if you look at like, Estro estradiol, or testosterone, values in the body, testosterone is measured in nanograms, and then estradiol is measured in picograms. So it's like, why is the like, it's such a weird dosing regimen. It's a really high amount. And it's like, why is a man taking tons of estrogen,

Jay Feldman  37:44  
or anybody for that matter, really the strategy,

Mike  37:47  
but especially a

Danny  37:48  
dude, the strategy here seems to be as to be as inconsistent as possible. So, so, okay, so these are some of the supplements that we talk about. So, I mean, does anybody have an objection to vitamin d3 at 2000 that seems pretty safe, you know. But what about DHEA at 25 milligrams,

Jay Feldman  38:07  
it's a bit high again. Yeah, it can aromatize at that point, and probably will, considering his diet and whatnot, like his entire lifestyle is going to drive aromatization. So I'm assuming that would be, I mean, he's taking also fish oil with it, and we'll keep going through it, but all, yeah, he's going to be aromatizing a decent portion of that. So that's a bit hard. We have the

Mike  38:26  
phytoestrogen, the genocide, plus the high dose estrogen. So, I mean, who even cares if you aromatize at that point if you're applying topical estradiol? Yeah,

Danny  38:37  
maybe that's the goal. So he wants more

estrogen. So we have, like, have, like, a thyroid inhibitor, a thyroid inhibitor, thyroid inhibitor, a possible thyroid inhibitor. Yeah, I can't recall, but I remember somebody saying something toxic about orotate. Have you guys ever looked at that? No,

Mike  38:57  
I don't know about that. I haven't looked directly at orotate. But I mean, his dose for lithium isn't high, but lithium does have some effects on the thyroid as well. Well, I took,

Danny  39:05  
I took this exact product many, many years ago. So there was, I can't remember, some doctor was promoting it. We have, like, another thyroid inhibitor, another thyroid inhibitor. I mean, well,

Mike  39:18  
then it's also weird, right? Because you have, like, you have Metformin on there, but then you also have nicotinamide riboside. So it's like, I'm going to block some of the complexes in the mitochondria with metformin, and then I'm going to try to adjust my NAD to NADH ratio with nicotinamide riboside. Instead of just saying, I'm going to make sure that I'm oxidizing carbohydrate effectively, so that I can, I can have an a better NAD plus NADH ratio. It's like, no, we'll just, we're gonna increase it, like, strong handedly with nicotinamide riboside, and then we'll, you know, Metformin has these benefits, so we're gonna use Metformin.

Jay Feldman  39:56  
Well, that's the ridiculousness of it, all right, to use. So Metformin was. On, just like caloric restriction in some of these studies, to extend lifespan. And so then it's like, oh yeah, of course, I'll just take Metformin. Forget the fact that it's just going to fully impair carboxidation And, you know, cause lactic acid production and prevent, essentially prevent ATP production from glucose, not to, you know, not to mention all the other plush plethora of of issues that it has. I mean, it's, it's, again, just a I don't think you can be cut. I don't think you can do it in a more reductionist way. Yeah, and people, even in the bioacking sphere, I mean, I know Dave Asper used to talk positively about Metformin. I think Ben Greenfield did too. They don't take it anymore because it's like direct mitochondrial toxicity, impairment of the electron transport chain, and those kinds of things. So

Mike  40:45  
plus, Metformin has a side effect of, like, wrecking your gut when you first start taking it. Like, it will make you run to the bathroom, which is why, like a carbos, plus Metformin, plus all of these things, like, I, I couldn't imagine, like, I couldn't imagine this not causing some type of discomfort, plus eating, like a ridiculous amounts of beans and nuts.

Danny  41:07  
Yeah, Metformin went the way of Robb Wolf's fish oil calculator. I think people realized that it was damaging, so they stopped doing it. But the funny thing about the health world is stuff will come back into vogue later, so maybe in eight months or something, a lot of these same people will start talking about Metformin again. So what else? What else is there to dissect from his supplemental Richmond?

Jay Feldman  41:28  
Well, he's taking fish oil. You know, no surprise there.

Mike  41:34  
We kind of talked about the an acetyl cysteine, some

Danny  41:38  
of this stuff. Well, that's

Mike  41:40  
the other thing. Is, like, he's four. It's like, this, the this is the whole thing that's also questionable to me. I want to improve my NAD to NADH ratio, so I'm going to go on a low carbohydrate diet and then plug HGH. It's like, so you're going to push fat oxidation, and then further push fat oxidation. It's like, how is that? How is that improving your NAD plus NADH ratio from some from, like, an overall picture, it's like, it's not so you're going to slam nicotinamide riboside, fine. I mean, if you want to, like, have to do it that way, then this doesn't make any sense. Like, if you actually go into the and understand what's going on in the mitochondria, it's like, that really doesn't make that much sense at all.

Speaker 1  42:19  
And just for the people that don't know, the NAD to NADH ratio reflects the amount of electrons are, to me, that are being passed to oxygen, reflecting like proper mitochondrial respiration, correct, right?

Jay Feldman  42:31  
And it's a good NAD NADH ratio, or a high NAD 10 NADH ratio is associated with health, and a low one is associated with every disease process. So

Speaker 1  42:39  
and nobody have this. Nobody disagrees with that, right? Have you talked to anybody in the health everybody's obsessed with NAD, right? What? So some of

Jay Feldman  42:47  
the people, so the informed people in the low carb space, like Peter from hyper lipid, is like, they actually understand that a low carb diet is going to reduce that ratio. And they, they then make the argument that that's good, because it's, you know, along the lines of rate of living theory, benefits of reactive oxygen, species production, things like that, like that's the perspective is all of the things that are essentially damaging and stressful are good. And that's because, normally, it comes back to hermesis. That's the only thing that actually, it at least makes a little bit more sense than the average low carb fasting person who just says sugar is toxic and increases stress hormones, and low carb increases your mitochondrial respiration and improves mitochondrial function. Like the people spouting that have no concept of the physiology at all, and they're just spitting out talking points that are that most people believe because people say it, but are not at all based in physiology. Yeah, you know,

Speaker 1  43:39  
I'm going to debug what I just said, Because keto acids are good medicine by vech, like, that's a famous kind of low carb paper

Mike  43:46  
argued for NADH, like, having a higher amount of reductive equivalence, or a higher NADH, yeah. And

Danny  43:52  
he says that beta hydroxybutyrate, the ketone, which is elevated in ketosis, matches the NADH production. So, yeah, papers

Jay Feldman  44:01  
are great. I talked about him with Dom, because vech talks about how terrible low carb diets and ketogenic diets are for mitochondrial function, and he doesn't write. He didn't recommend it because of that, and instead recommended just using ketones to try to get some of the benefits without those negatives. Got

Speaker 1  44:15  
it, got it. Got it. Okay, so what is what else is there to wrap up, like the he's taken a pretty high ratio of t4, to t3 so, like, this is a nine four, about 40. So 150 to 150, to 10. Is that right?

Jay Feldman  44:33  
So probably, yeah. And you know, he's got no conversion t4, to t3 going on.

Danny  44:38  
So 15 to one ratio of t4 to t3 which is crazy dude. Man. Again, I'm not trying to project onto him, but like, I take a five, I've taken a five to one and felt like basically super dumb, like I couldn't I couldn't even express what I was feeling at a dinner conversation. I remember one time, but that's pretty well. Oh yeah, the 17 Alpha estrogen, four grams per week transdermal testosterone. To say it again, like nothing.

Mike  45:11  
I'm just laughing. Is it such a ridiculous dose I haven't seen, even for women, I haven't seen a four gram per dose week so far.

Danny  45:20  
Yeah, that is definitely odd that he's taking so much. Maybe

Mike  45:23  
that's a miss. That's maybe that's written incorrectly, four grams.

Speaker 1  45:26  
You know what it could be. He might tend to or, again, I'm speculating hard, but he might tend towards fatigue. And so if he was taking estrogen, that might feel like an upper to him, and it might allow him to get everything that he needs to do, uh, done every day. But yeah, that's that's hard to justify. That's pretty crazy. He

Mike  45:44  
is using aspirin. That's nice.

Danny  45:47  
80 milligrams of aspirin protect

Mike  45:50  
aspirin, thyroid, taurine, DHS, testosterone, d3, k2, I think those are okay.

Jay Feldman  46:02  
Yeah, and you see the reflections of all these things in his lab work too. Like his HDL is super high at 73 which is only a pretty good sign of estrogenic status, uh,

Speaker 1  46:11  
his shpg was crazy high, and also

Jay Feldman  46:15  
probably driven by SG, yeah,

Mike  46:16  
low carb, high fiber, high fat diet, yeah,

Danny  46:21  
but, but the other

Mike  46:22  
thing too is I feel like a lot of people will see how lean he is, and they'll automatically assume that that means you're healthy and but I don't actually think that being that Lean is healthy in the law in the long run, I talked about this on what was it on The thermal diet podcast is talking about, after a certain point, leanness is actually not a good thing for both men and women, and even so, body fat percentage and also BMI, if it gets too low, there are like, negative associations with health with that. And I remember when, when we were in college, j and we were both like, super lean, doing low carb and intermittent fasting and working out like both of us were not feeling that great overall, in multiple areas, hormonally, sleep wise, energy wise, workout progress, all these different types of things. So I feel like I don't know. I don't I think that people assume that extreme leanness, like that is a good thing. Now being overweight doesn't not making an argument. Because I think a lot of people automatically go to this to say, oh, you should just be overweight. What the argument I'm more pushing for is like, there's like a optimal body fat level, or there's like a around a normal level. That's appropriate, and I think he's way far on the other side. I think that's that's another problem here. I remember when I was that lean. I have vivid memories of having really bad sleep and not feeling well. I also have vivid memories of trying a diet set up, similar to this, been a plant based phase before I even got to the Paleo stuff, and having, like, a really bad time and really bad mood and and energy and like relationships and everything was suffering and digestively. Did

Jay Feldman  47:58  
that lead to your gallbladder surgery?

Mike  48:01  
That actually was what led to my gallbladder surgeries was I went on, like a plant, a super plant based diet. It was like lentils and raw arugula and raw garlic and avocado and like olive oil, dressing with lemon I would make, and I would eat that, like, and then, like vinegar, and I eat that, like, three times a day sounds good. I felt terrible. I also, I remember I went to the cardiologist when I was eating that type of diet. I was very lean at that point as well, and my heart rate was like, like, resting was like, 38 to 40 beats per minute. And I remember the cardiologist, like commenting, and he's like, wow. It's like, you're so healthy, you must be, like, quite an athlete. I just remember, like, I was freezing cold. My workouts were terrible. I was also juicing kale. And then that's when I wound up developing the, yeah, that's when I went exactly when I developed the gallbladder problems, or it was, I don't even know it was gallbladder, but serious digestive issues. And then the surgeon was just like, oh, it's probably your gallbladder. Let's take it out. Yeah, just

Danny  49:04  
from a quick glance, his cholesterol seems low. His DHA, despite taking it, seems low. His SHBG, like we talked about, seems high,

Jay Feldman  49:14  
farther down. Danny, he mentions different markers, different values, whereas total cholesterol is 121,

Danny  49:19  
28 I saw that, but I didn't, I didn't read it fully, so I didn't know that. I mean, that's, that's really low, you know, that's, um, that's like, endotoxemia, or your liver is not functioning, right? Low, that's crazy.

Unknown Speaker  49:32  
Yeah, all,

Danny  49:34  
they're all optimal, though, to take his word for it, well, lower

Jay Feldman  49:38  
is better. There's, there's no negative lower, and lower cholesterol.

Danny  49:42  
I honestly think this would be, like, hypo cholestea. Like this would be, I mean, like, isn't it that's under this is like, Well, under the range look,

Mike  49:50  
actually, the way they do the range is now, is just less than 200 is good? Got it? And then if you have heart disease cardiologists, some cardiologists will even. Push for lower, like, as low as possible. Some of them think is, like, the best way to go totally.

Jay Feldman  50:07  
I know people who are put on statins for heart disease who have cholesterol in the 120s and have signs of muscle damage and all sorts of issues, and the doctors do not want to remove, like, lower the dose on the statins or anything. They're so against that.

Danny  50:21  
Yeah, yeah, crazy, yeah. It's

Mike  50:22  
quite, it's quite an interesting that's the other thing is, like, who's defining what's optimal? Who's defining these ranges? That's, that's also really important to because the other thing is, like, so, so say you're gonna plug in your information into some like, super AI system, like lab analyzer, and then it's just like there's this range, and your labs are optimally in this range. Are you looking at that in the context of everything else? Are you looking at like your symptoms, with the labs, with what's going on, with your diet, connecting the different dots all together, trying to figure out what's causing what, why you're in in this particular way, or experiencing that, and like understanding the relationships between each thing and I, I doubt. It doesn't seem like that's the case. It's like, oh, this is the optimal value over optimal value. Like, this study says that this lab value is associated with X, so you just want to be less than this particular lab value. And then it's like, once we're there, okay, that's optimal. I don't know if that's how they're going about it, but it seems, based on how everything else is running the level of reductionism, that's probably something like that. And I would argue that that's that's largely not ideal, especially because I wouldn't characterize many of those lab values as the optimal I mean, obviously that's what you guys are saying as well.

Jay Feldman  51:34  
Yeah, and it's based on research that requires interpretation if you want to actually get it right. I mean, in the same way that we can talk Metformin, calorie restriction, anything else. The lab value ranges that are determined are based on, often reductionist assumptions and correlations and things like that. And, you know, we've, I think all of us have talked about issues with low cholesterol levels in the past. I mean, that's that is the territory that you fall into when you are just taking these endpoints and looking at health as a computer program, and you just, you know, these studies just prove that this is the right formula, and you just do everything you can to create that formula. I mean, that's, that's, I think this is all to be expected when that happens. But do do we want to move on? I mean, feel free to comment on that. But do we want to move on past Brian Johnson,

Speaker 1  52:22  
I'm happy to happy to move on you. Next. Next segment, correct? Yeah. Okay, so our bioenergetic basics, you know, I have a trademark on this, Jay, so I don't know, just joking. So why don't we bring it down a little bit and talk about, like, what is stress and so obviously helped popularized by Han Selig. And I threw some things into into this, talking about how varied stress can be. And in some of Han Sally's books, he was talking about how excitement can be stressful, you know, waiting for a love, a loved one, to get home. And so I think at least from me talking with other people, I think it's usually thought of is like, Oh, I had an argument with Mike, and now I'm stressed out, you know. But I think in the bioenergic space, when we're talking about stress, it's more on a cellular level. And so if your cells are not getting oxygen or not getting sugar, they're going to start adapting, sometimes favorably, but usually unfavorably, and release lactic acid, cytokines, etc, and cause an increase in the brain to release stress hormones. So what is your guys's basic view of stress?

Mike  53:29  
Yeah, I mean, the, I think the most basic way that I tend to put it is like a supply and demand issue. I think that's probably like the biggest framework with which look at it, right? So it's like that some of the things you mentioned Danny, like, if the cells aren't getting oxygen, and they can't make energy, so now you have a supply problem. But when you have external stressors, you know, you have an exam, you have a you have, like, heavy exercise, you're in a super caloric deficit, like our friend we just talked about before, or you're, you know, you're at war, whatever it is that's a demand issue, and it the psychological systems. I guess, something that you touched on it, or that you implied is that the stress response itself, I kind of think of it like a funnel. So you have, like, all these different things that can happen, but they all get funneled into the same characterized response. And that's what Hans was talking or Hans and Selig was talking about inside general that's why the general adaptation syndrome. So you have all these stressors same response. And there's a typical curve that Jay and I discussed and one of the podcasts as well, and I know Danny, you've discussed it multiple times with both Georgie and Dr Pete on your on your generative energy podcast. So it's that those are like two big pieces, I think, to frame it as is the supply and demand and generic pathway,

Speaker 1  54:48  
yeah, kind of like a mismatch between the organisms resources and the demands from the environment, right? A shorthand way of saying it, yeah,

Jay Feldman  54:55  
yeah, yeah. I mean, I think we all have similar ways to defining it. I would say that stress is. Is a response, a signaling response, to an energy deficit. So an energy deficit being that situation where we either have where we have less supply than demand, either due to greater demands or less supply, as you were saying, Mike. And so this is pretty fundamental, because the availability of energy is the driver of health. And so if we're seeing more stress, it means that we're in generally energy deficient states, and that is going to be something that drives us towards, you know, less health, toward degeneration. And instead, we want to be doing the opposite, and so bringing this into stepwise, into more practical senses. So for one, we want to be making sure that we're encouraging the things that increase the amount of energy we have available, improving our ability to, you know, for mitochondria to respire, for them to produce energy from the fuel that's coming in. There's a lot of factors there. I mean, that's what we talk about all the time. You know, polyunsaturated fats being things that inhibit that, and, you know, a lack of carbohydrates, of course, being something that inhibits that. And on the other hand, we want to make sure that we're not providing excessive demands that we can't handle, and again, in the short term, that can be fine if you know we're not always going to have the energy on hand to deal with some bout of exercise, but doing it excessively will lead to excess deficits and excess stress that is Mike was getting at, will come at a cost in terms of recovery, and if we're not then providing enough Energy for the recovery process, it'll lead to further degeneration. It will come at the cost of function and organization and structure. And so it's a really fundamental component, and something that, as I think, Danny, as you were saying, you know, the alternative world's perspective of stress is psychological stress. There's no conception of this physiological stress that's driven and affected by diet and exercise and lack of sleep and whatnot, and the things that are really inherently stressful and are viewed as beneficial due to hormesis, things like low carb diets, intermittent fasting, cold thermal you know, cold plungers, all those things that directly drive stress, in this case, by either dramatically increasing the demands or reducing the Supply, like for calorie restriction or low carb diets, those are the fact that those things drive stress is not mentioned, that is omitted, and instead, they just mentioned this endpoint of some benefit or increased mitochondrial respiration, while omitting the part that that's happening as a part of a stress response. And so it's a really fundamental piece here, I would say, like a really fundamental aspect of the bioenergetic view, because it's such a direct representation and reflection of the energetic state. And so, yeah, I think when it comes to basics, this is one of the basics that we want to focus on the most. And the only other thing I want to come back to is Hans Selye, eustress versus distress, because I think it provides some confusion. But I'll let you guys comment first, and then maybe we could talk about that. One

Speaker 1  57:42  
thing I did want to did want to throw is, like, for example, in hypothyroidism, or if the pulsing temperature were low, like, say, very low, like 95 or something, like a person would be in stress, like in a state of stress, just stare, sitting down, staring at a wall, you know. And so I just want to, like, hammer that point home, because you don't really need to jump in a cold thermogenesis bath or do anything special, you can just be in your body. Can be in a state of stress without absolutely any kind of stimuli or anything, yeah,

Jay Feldman  58:11  
well, and especially if you're running a 25% caloric restriction, I mean, that is a baseline of massive stress that is, that is huge, or a low carb diet, which she's essentially doing two when you implement a low carb diet, there's measurable increases in stress hormones for six weeks while staying on that diet. Like, what other thing causes six weeks of stress that's that's measurable by things like elevated cortisol, and, of course, dealing

Danny  58:33  
with this Atem unit to run this show exactly

Jay Feldman  58:39  
again, just to clarify, like, I don't want to make the we can talk about low carbon stress in the future, there is still stressful effects beyond that six weeks. But that's kind of an aside. But anyway, go ahead, Mike,

Mike  58:51  
I was, for me, I with a stress piece, something I think that's that's super important to put in perspective here is that, like, it's actually cumulative. So it's not like you just have a stress you have a stressful event, and then that's it, and then you kind of get over, like, so you do your cold plunge, and you're good to go. It's like you have multiple layers of stressful events happening on a consistent basis, and so you're adding, you're adding to that. And the question is, like, Can the body recover? Yes, but not if you keep overloading it. So if you're running a caloric deficit, deficit, if you have things going on with with your gut, if you are using doing all these different hormetic things, you're fasting, you're going on these runs, you're you're have stress at work, all these different components, like actual psychological stress, things going with your family, like you are loading the deck. You're essentially there's multiple spheres within your life that can be, I guess, easy way to think about as good or bad, and you're basically stacking the deck against your your favor. And it's through this general idea of like, what, what doesn't kill us makes us stronger. And it's like, what doesn't kill. Kill you, makes you weaker until you recover from that particular circumstance, gain some type of knowledge, or whatever the deal is, and then move forward. But it's not because this thing almost killed you that it made you stronger. It's not the actual killing piece that makes you stronger or better in any type of way. It's either learning from not from almost dying, or it's being able to adapt to whatever this particular circumstance is, and you can also adapt in a negative type of way. So it's and this is this gets into an argument around and we've talked about this in the podcast before, but specific effects of something being a driver of the situation versus, like the actual stress being a driver. So I think that it's really important to understand that the way that I usually conceptualize this with clients like if you think about your life, you have multiple spheres. And you if you have say, your sleep is off and your diet is off, and you have stress at work, your functions and things you have are going on are not going to be going too hot. But if you have these other ducks in a row. You have these different components in order. Then it's whatever. If you have this external stressor from your boss or from monetary stress or whatnot, you're much more ready to deal with it because you have energy supply now to focus on this piece, instead of suffering from all these other pieces. You basically have all these factors coming in at you at the same time. And this is the problem with the reductionistic perspective is that if you don't have this unifying underlying piece where you're looking at things, you're saying, okay, like, what actually is stress in this arbitrary, ethereal thing that I think a lot of people Oh, I'm stressed out. It's like, what is that actually, if you define it as an energetic situation, and you actually get into some concrete terms, then what you start to realize is, Oh, wow. Like, these things are actually all stressful, and this is not sustainable, like, and this is why I'm suffering and having these effects. Like, you can actually see the relationships now, because the the the frame and context is clear. And so it's very important, I think, to get this down at its core, um, and then guess, in conjunction with, like, what is energy? So we'll, I guess we'll talk about that on other other episodes, like getting into what, what the energy actually is. But for now, the stress is a supply and demand idea, yeah,

Speaker 1  1:02:10  
not to beat a dead horse, but also that, like, things could have happened to the person, uh, prenatally, or when they were born, that could set them up for a lifetime trajectory of stress, you know? So it's, I just want to emphasize that it's not, I'm not. We're not saying, Oh, the people that do low carb are stressed out, and people that do bioenergetic stuff are not stressed out. It's like there are signals being sent to the person during development or whatever, that can really shift things massively towards adaptation. And again, that's why I think a lot of the time, like things outside the scope of diet need to be implemented, because the situation is so bad for most everyone, unless you live in some 10,000 feet altitude and eating natural foods or something. But it's, yeah, it's not just the people that do ice baths or low carb. It's, it's probably everybody that was born in the last I don't know, all Zoomers, all millennials, all Gen Xers, and those damn boomers, they have only getting worse, too, right? Yeah, 100%

Mike  1:03:16  
the other thing too, is that

Jay Feldman  1:03:18  
good? Good? Well, so then the perspective that we're supposed to add stress onto that to fix the situation is, I think, where even more absurdity comes in, right? If you're dealing with degenerative issues and you're already in a major stress state, that then you're supposed to add fasting and caloric restriction and excessive exercise and on and on, to add stress to then improve the situation and reality, it just makes things worse, which is finally something that's getting a little bit of traction. And some of the people who are major fans of fasting, for example, people like Mike mutzel and and Thomas de Lauer and Peter Attia have all talked about how it's, you know, you're actually already getting stress from these other things, like exercise, so it doesn't make sense to fast too, and I would still even disagree with that, but at least we're starting to recognize that there are some cumulative effects here, starting to recognize some of these issues with the hormetic mindset, starting to recognize that the impact of stress is turning down reproductive hormone production, turning down testosterone, among other things, and progesterone turning down thyroid activity like there are major costs to these things as an adaptive response, because the whole idea is that our bodies are preparing for further stress, and they want to conserve energy so that they have fuel and energy on board for future deficits, for future stressful events, so that it'll, you know, the response, the whole point of stress, is to signal To the rest of the body to turn its metabolic rate down. So I think that's an important contextual piece. The other thing that Mike you were getting at as far as stressor effects versus specific effects, is something that Hans Selye brought up, and we've talked about this in terms of hormesis, but people have gotten can. Have had some conflation here, where they've started to and this is a whole hermetic view, is they attribute the benefits to any of these things to the stress they cause, as opposed to other effects, and it ends up leading to some really dangerous outcomes. But on the whole, what you end up having is this idea that the stress on the body is beneficial, instead of other aspects of exercise or other aspects of low carb diets, like, you know, removing GI distress and endotoxin and whatnot, and that leads to this massive conflation where then people are trying to do things to induce stress. And another thing that has kind of led to this conflation, which isn't Han Sally's fault, but it's people's interpretation of his of the words eustress and distress. So he had these two terms to try to describe kind of what you were getting at initially, Danny, which is that some things are stressful and have a net positive, and some things are stressful and have a net negative. It was never due to the stress. The stress was the same in those two situations. People say, Oh well, it's just matter of the amount of stress and things like that. But that's not at all what it was. What it was was the specific effects, the other effects of the intervention versus the stress, and whether those other effects outweighed the negative effect of the stress. That's what determined whether something was eustress or distress in in cell years view, and in, you know, in terms of the physiology. So that's it kind of goes along with this other misconception, which is that we'll say these things that stress is inherently harmful, and you get these comments of, oh, well, you can't avoid stress. What are you supposed to do? Just like, sit in a room, sit in a blank room and not do anything? And that is not what we're saying. And we can say this now, and people will still make that comment forever, but, but we're not saying that you can avoid stress. What we're saying is that you shouldn't try to induce stress. The stress is not beneficial. The stress is inherently harmful. But we can still include stimuli that are stressful as long as they're we're doing it for the benefit of their specific unique effects. And so when you have that perspective, it changes the kinds of things you would want to do, right? So instead of doing a low carb diet, which has a causes a lot of stress, but also causes gi relief. Maybe we could adjust our diet in another way that causes less stress or doesn't cause stress and also provides the same gi relief. Like that is the kind of simple example here of the application of the of Han Sally's ideas and of stress.

Danny  1:07:16  
Yeah, I think Celia said adaptability was like the ultimate characteristic of life or something. And then he also said the only people that did not have stress were dead. And so it's like, you could say that 100,000 times. It's like the internet's favorite straw man, like the repeat anti stress stuff, but Mike, what were you saying?

Mike  1:07:35  
Yeah, I think the other thing to keep in mind is that when I'm when, when I'm working with somebody, or I'm thinking about this. The goal is to try to improve the person's baseline foundation so that they are resilient to stress. Because stress is unavoidable. You're going to have stress in your life. There's things just happen. There's no way to get around it. So the goal is to instead of this mentality is like, I'm going to do thing. What doesn't kill me makes you stronger. Same type of idea. The goal is, like, I'm going to make myself so resilient and so strong that when I do face stress, I have enough resources and enough tools on board. And its coping strategies goes from lifestyle management to mental frameworks to supplementation to whatever the deal is, so I can either a deal to stress like it's no problem, this stressor and then B if it if the stressor is significant, I can bounce back quickly. And then I can also be involved in other things in my life, or tasks in my life that actually do have some element of stress, like exercise, but also has specific effects. So the goal is to get to a point where you can handle these things and they're not as significant of a stressors anymore. You have that resilience. You've built up that foundation. And this is diametrically opposed to the idea of, like, let's just add more stressful things on board so that, like, our bodies can adapt to this stress. It's like, yeah, your body's going to adapt to this stress. And Jay, this is what you're essentially saying, is like, you're going to adapt to the stress. You'll make more cortisol, you'll make more adrenaline, you'll make more glucagon, and then those things will make you less resilient to stress in the future, as they turn down different metabolic processes, and then they alter energy availability going forward. So it's like, instead of doing that, get to, like, a really, like, resilient state. And then when you're exposed to stress, will you have some of those hormones turn on, yes, but you can bounce back or at the perceived element of stress, or the level of stress that you're feeling is, is is non existent or minimal compared to before. And I think, in my experience, people think about when they're like teenagers, or when they're kids, it's like they're not really stressed, and it's like after 20s or something like that, it's all downhill. And I think that's because, at least in for our generations, general ideas like the reserves have been depleted because you didn't grow up, and Danny, you were touching on this. You You didn't have like, good nutrition in the womb, and then you came out of the womb, you got like, a ridiculous vaccine schedule. And maybe you weren't breastfed. You were fed like soy. Soy formula. And then you grew up eating like the worst cereal possible for breakfast, and then some garbage school lunch for lunch, and then dinner, maybe your parents ordered pizza or Chinese food. And then you, as a teenager, you kind of didn't eat that much, and you went to college and drank your face off. And then when you get out of college, it's like, oh, wow, I'm hypothyroid, and my androgens are low, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Like all of those things were insults. While your body was developing, you didn't have all the tools necessary, because trick cereal just doesn't cut it. So now you're at a point where you're you've, like, you've moved through the resilience. You didn't build up those same types of reserves, and you have to build that back up. It's a process of building that back up. And that goes to what you're saying, Danny, where some people's situations are to an extent, where just fixing the diet isn't the solution by itself. It's a multi pronged approach to address different areas. To move somebody from this deep hole of stress, because a lot of people initially, when they get into the to these spheres like, Oh, I'm going to go fasting, I'm gonna go carnivore, I'm gonna go keto. And it kind of works, because it's still better than a standard American diet. But then all the other problems start to develop afterwards. Then you have to dig yourself out of all of these different holes. So that's a Yeah, I think Go ahead. Go ahead.

Speaker 1  1:11:15  
We can move on shortly after this, unless you guys have more to say. But the one thing I did want to beat into the ground is that, for example, I know a lot of people are like, Take, for example, Sean Baker. They'll say, like, you know what? Why is Sean Baker seemingly thriving on carnivore diet when you guys are saying it's so stressful? So number one, I don't think he can really confidently say that, because, I mean, don't spend a week with him, or go to the bathroom with him, etc. But I think the transgenerational kind of trajectory of health is really important to think about. Because if Sean, I can't, I don't know his age, but he's like a boomer like it, I would guess that his trajectory in life is a waste, a higher standard of health than a Zoomer. And so if a Zoomer were to try to mimic him, like you said, Mike, there are positive parts about the carnivore diet, but I think they'd ultimately fail at some point, because the stress that Sean can withstand could, like, kill a Zoomer over time, because they just have different starting points. And so I think, I think that's never talked about, and I just really like waving the flag about it, because I think it's important.

Jay Feldman  1:12:21  
Yeah, well, look at Bryan Johnson's routine, and he's alive on it, whereas Mike had to get a surgery after doing that. So,

Danny  1:12:30  
Mike, why are you tougher? Why couldn't you withstand the stress?

Mike  1:12:34  
I don't know. Man, my my digestive system just checked out.

Danny  1:12:38  
Dude, I when I criticized the carnivore diet in one of my videos, people were like, You should toughen up.

Jay Feldman  1:12:46  
That's a good point before, because I know we're about to head into the next section,

Mike  1:12:52  
but he did, Danny did toughen up by not doing the carnivore diet. I just want to throw that in there.

Danny  1:13:03  
Yeah, Jay, go ahead. Well,

Jay Feldman  1:13:06  
I was just saying is that what I'm hearing out of this conversation is essentially that stress hormones like glucagon are evil and that we'd be better off without them. Is that? So what you guys are saying?

Speaker 1  1:13:14  
That's exactly right. Yeah, Jay, I ruined your very elegant segue. But do we want to get into bad takes in this article from who's the person? Marty Marty Kendall. Marty Kendall, and so he This was in response to a podcast you guys had done, or interview you had done.

Jay Feldman  1:13:33  
Yeah, this podcast, the energy balance podcast. It's, I think, episodes 86 and 87 talking about, we're commenting back on Robb Wolf's view of the bioenergetic view. And so this was an article written after that that was then sent to me, and this is Marty Kendall, kind of descript like response to our view, but really it's a response to a non existent view, or at least not ours. And so we can kind of go through it and describe that. He also, again, Mike was just as much involved with it. He just doesn't mention Mike's name, but few do Sorry. Mike,

Danny  1:14:11  
okay, so when you say Danny, I said few do mention you. Mike, yes. So just joking. Okay, so glucagon versus insulin, the accelerator and brake pedal for your metabolism. What were the salient points that you wanted? Or do you want to steel man, what he's saying, if possible, and then give, give your rebuttal.

Mike  1:14:33  
Problem is you can't steel man, it because he's not saying anything throughout the article, like reading this article was and again, this is objective, but it was painful, because the there's he makes statements like he said he he frames it as if we're not talking about context or nuance or moderation, and then he goes on to make hyperbolic claims ascribe them to us. What we said, which is not what we said in any type of way, and then goes on to agree with those points and while trying to refute them, but then being contradictory and in different segments. And there's not like a unifying there's no unifying element through here. It's just like a bunch of different sections with no real logical flow, and then some copywriting thrown in about his special tracking course where he adjusts people's diet based on reading their blood sugar tracings. So it's like a, it's like it was a very weird type of article. Wasn't a, it's hard to steel man it and give a good refutation to it, because there's nothing of super substance to steel man overall, it

Speaker 1  1:15:43  
seems like the result of somebody that looks too closely at macronutrients. Like that is the big thing to modify. Like, like, the unifying theory to Marty might be like, get your macronutrients right, you know, and that's what this read it. And I think towards the bottom, doesn't he say, if you get your macronutrients right, that'll fix your hormones, something like

Jay Feldman  1:16:05  
that. Well, we'll get to it. So I think so. A couple things. First off, as with anyone else, just can mention this again, we're happy to have Marty on and discuss our views of glucagon and insulin and where they differ, or the fact that they probably most I think so. The other thing, and we're kind of getting at this, we agree with most things. I mean, he kind of just says, like they I mean, we'll read it, but he painted as though we think that there is no purpose of glucagon. And he says there is a purpose. And like, that is the argument he's making, but it has really nothing to do with what we described. In any case, we're happy to have him on and talk about this. I think in terms of steel Manning, we'll just read. This is the highlighted parts here are not the whole article. It's just parts of it. So instead of trying to steel man and create an argument for him, we'll just read what he wrote, at least the pieces of it that were relevant or most relevant to us, and just share some like try to share some thoughts on it to the extent that it allows.

Mike  1:17:01  
I do want to throw in here too, is like, throughout the article, he uses, like, this weird analogy for glucagon and insulin, as far as, like, how they're working, or what they're doing. And then the, I think part of the problem is that when he when, like, if, when I'm reading the article, I'm thinking about how he's processing it logically in his mind. And he's he's his ability to understand insulin and glucagon is dependent upon the frame or the way that the analogy that he's using. And since the analogy is basically entirely incorrect, to to a very large not entirely, but to a very large extent, incorrect when he tries to make further extensions about how these things are working. It gets into this, like, weird, like, he makes a lot of weird statements that maybe make sense in the frame, but are not actually physiologically correct.

Jay Feldman  1:17:53  
So there's a lot of things that's weird. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah,

Mike  1:17:57  
I think it's just, I think, if from a constructive perspective, I think if his frame was better for or the analogy he used, it would be he would understand it better. But I think that there's a lack of understanding, because the analogy that he's trying to paint through here is not consistent with what actually happens. It was more like having the analogy and then as you're applying Jay working back from the analogy, instead of having the foundational understanding, and then you creating an analogy off of that foundational understanding.

Danny  1:18:27  
Well, not to mention this is completely wrong.

Jay Feldman  1:18:29  
That's the whole analogy. Mike's talking about insulin is the break and glucagon is the gas for metabolism is just completely off base. Yeah, but why don't we read through it and let him present it, and we'll, we'll kind of explain as we go. Read through like this first section?

Danny  1:18:45  
Yeah, I've been banging on for years about insulin. Now it's not the bad guy. In hopes of getting keto, the Keto community to listen, people often think they're fat because their insulin levels are high. However, the reverse is true. Your insulin levels are high because of your body has more energy to hold in storage, ie body fat. Now in other circles, it seems the hormone glucagon is being cast as the bad guy. In recent I recently listened to a couple episodes of the energy balance podcast where Jay Feldman tried to debunk a comment from Robb wolf in response to a question about Ray Pete's bioenergetic view, according to Jay based on Ray Pete's bioenergetic view, glucagon is an evil stress hormone that underlines uh, underlies diabetes and thyroid dysfunction. Unfortunately, context, moderation and nuance are boring, something something new, exciting, flashy and extreme draws attention and creates massive uh, warring, uh, us versus them. Camps and large social media following that can easily be monetized, but context is critical to ensure sustainable, long term, lasting results and keeps you from swinging to extremes that will break you. In this article, I want to unpack the role of glucagon versus insulin, helps versus helps you. Understand why both hormones are important and a simple way to avoid extremes of both. By the way, I laughed because he didn't mention Mike. I thought...

Mike  1:20:10  
I laughed because he he's he says, unfortunately, context, moderation and nuance are boring. And then just below that, he goes on to or he goes on to say that we're calling right above that, he goes on to say that we're saying that glucagon is evil. So it's like he makes a hyperbolic statement about what we're saying, and then turns around and asks, and it's talking about context, nuance and moderation. It's like those are that's contradictory. To go and do that to then straw man, an argument to an extreme, and then talk about context and nuance, like as I was reading this, I was when I was first reading this is, like this is and the rest of the tone through the articles like that keeps throwing out context and nuance, and then makes bold, hyperbolic claims, and then ascribe that are opposite of what we're saying, and then ascribes that opposite as a complete opposite claim to us. It's a very weird way to go about it. Well, Jay,

Danny  1:21:05  
what and what? Oh, go, go, go. Oh,

Jay Feldman  1:21:07  
go ahead. Danny,

Danny  1:21:08  
I was just gonna say, What is your view of glucagon? What is your view of insulin?

Mike  1:21:12  
It's a really evil hormone! haha

Jay Feldman  1:21:16  
So the basic I premise that Mike and I were talking about in that episode, and providing evidence for and everything was that excessive stress hormones, of which glucagon is one. And so we made that argument there the research and everything driven by something like a low carb diet is harmful in the long term and depresses metabolism. And a couple of the mechanisms through which it does this is by doing things like impairing t4 to t3 thyroid hormone conversion and driving an insulin resistant state. That is the general idea that we're premising, and it's actually a premise of moderation. Because what we're saying is not to do the extreme of a diet, like a low carb diet that causes extreme elevations and stress hormones. So what we're putting forth is, first off, is a moderate or like a high carb, high fat, moderate carb, moderate fat, non restrictive diet that involves nuance and moderation, and is not that we're like what we're saying is not what he is saying for one the other. The other thing is that he's making it sound as though saying that you want to have higher low levels or something is inherently wrong, because everything has a function. And we are not saying that there is no function of glucagon. It has a function that's part of the problem with excess levels of it. So if I would assume he's saying that, I would assume he would agree that you don't want to do something that causes major increases in cortisol as a long term solution for anything, I wouldn't put that as an extreme view. The whole cortisol itself is, you could say an extreme hormone. It's a stress hormone that is only invoked during times of stress, but not saying that there's no purpose of it. There's a very important purpose. Part of that purpose is to turn down your metabolic rate, reduce reproductive hormone production, reduce thyroid hormone production and conversion, cause insulin resistance. Those have adaptive reasons, and we're not saying it's better to not have those. So does that encapsulate enough? And then, I don't know if there's anything else to mention here other than that, he's like painting us in an extreme us versus them, sort of ridiculousness that we aren't suggesting. And I don't think he is either.

Speaker 1  1:23:16  
So, so ridiculous. But I mean, my understanding of hookah gun is it's coupled with the adrenaline and other the catecholamines as a true emergency hormone, you know, and things like cortisol and the pituitary hormones are more sustained long term stress and so, so, yeah, I mean, it literally is absurd to say that we think it's evil or something. It's like life saving, you know, in the short term. But like, I think, like you guys have talked about, and we've all talked about, like, the trajectory of life is reaching higher and higher energy states, you know, to accumulate structure. And I don't think you'd be want to be relying on these primitive hormones that slow things down in effort to go longer, on less and so...

Mike  1:24:07  
Well, and this the problem of the frame, though, is that he consistently frames glucagon as like increasing metabolism, which is actually completely counter to that. The other thing I wanted to add to this, to this context, was that when we were discussing in the Robb wolf video, was Robb wolf was talking about blood glucose curves. So he was talking about on low carb diets, what you tend to see is like a more flat blood glucose curve, whereas in the in a ray peat, or bioenergetic based diet, you have these ups and downs. And what we were saying. What we were saying is that the ups and downs are a normal response, and the rise in insulin with carbohydrate intake is a normal response. And then essentially, what ends up happening is that your blood glucose will dip back up, and those hormones will kick in. And that's also the hormones being glucagon and adrenaline, that's also a normal response. Months, which is it's argue it's arguably much better to have the excursions during the day, have carbohydrate blood glucose goes up, insulin comes up, brings it back down, glucagon comes up. You eat again, go and keep going in that cycle, than to just be on a low carb diet and have a relatively flat blood glucose level because you're not having any you're not taking an exogenous carbohydrate and then having glucagon run consistently all the time to maintain your blood sugar at an appropriate level, because you are not having that exact exogenous carbohydrate come in. And what we were saying in the context for our video was that it it's while you need glucagon excessive levels, keyword, excessive levels of glucagon are problematic, and you see higher levels of glucagon and dysregulated glucagon signaling inside states like diabetes. And then there's also negative effects of glucagon on metabolism and thyroid function on a overall because essentially he's saying here that glucagon is signaling to increase metabolism, but counter to that, and we'll get to those points. Glucagon is there to basically help to slow metabolism and provide some to provide substrate in the form of carbohydrate when you don't have anything coming in. So it's actually the break on the metabolic processes.

Jay Feldman  1:26:21  
Long, long term, it is short term, it does increase respiration. And we talked about that dichotomy in a couple of episodes on our podcast where we dug into a study on stress and mitochondrial responses to it. So if you do look at what happens short term with glucagon, it looks like it is the gas pedal, but long term it's not, and an excessive amounts it's not. So let's, let's, let him create that argument, and then we'll comment more on it.

Danny  1:26:45  
Yeah. Want me to read this?

Jay Feldman  1:26:47  
Yeah, please.

Danny  1:26:48  
In Type Two Diabetes, the balance between glucagon and insulin is critical. People with type two by type two diabetes still produce insulin and glucagon. Their pancreas often works overtime to pump out extra glucagon and insulin in the early years. Because you want me to read this word, because extra weight of going someone's personal fat threshold often underlines type two diabetes. Someone with type two diabetes typically has a lot of extra stored energy. So why? While we often think of type two diabetes as a problem with carbohydrate metabolism, the root cause is really overfilling our fat fuel tanks beyond what our bodies are comfortable with. Subsequently, they're out there. Alpha cells work night and day, pushing out glucagon to signal the liver to unload some of that burden by pushing out the energy stored in their liver and fat cells. But in type two diabetes, the beta cells are also working overtime, trying to put the brakes on the slow release of stored energy from flowing into their bloodstream. Eventually, these people can experience pancreatic burnout and rapid weight loss, where their beta cells give up. But in the contrast to type one diabetes, these people, these people have become insulin resistance because their fat cells are full. Their bodies have become resistant to the effects of insulin. So while they produce enough insulin, their cells are no longer sensitive to its signaling effects that allow glucose into the cell. IE, the anabolic role and insulin is no longer effective at holding the stored energy back. Glucagon alone would be very effective weight loss drug other than the diabetic ketoacidosis, muscle loss and extremely high levels of glucose, ketones and free fatty acids in the blood that accompany it. IE, don't try this at home.

Mike  1:28:27  
There's a lot. There's a lot of things.

Danny  1:28:28  
Jay, why did you make me read this?

Jay Feldman  1:28:30  
Sorry,

Danny  1:28:32  
this is way too much.

Jay Feldman  1:28:33  
It is a lot of text to read, but we're trying to steel man him, right? So it's okay. So there's a couple of things to come back to. So for one, it's interesting at the end here that he talks about glucagon alone being in a very effective weight loss drug. When the incredibly popular weight loss drugs that are currently being used all the semi glutides, those Empik we go via all these opposed glucagon. So just like an interesting point there that the actual drug that's used in type two diabetes currently, or one of them, and that is used currently for weight loss, is an anti glute, like is a an antagonist to glucagon, something that lowers glucagon. So that's one thing. And of course, the other thing is, you could all you can, kind of say that, you know, epinephrine or glucagon are going to induce weight loss, and short term, they will, like short term, they'll jack up your metabolic rate. But as I was saying last time, in the long term, they cause insulin resistance. They cause, you know, issues with thyroid hormone conversion, and they will dramatically lower the metabolic rate. It's there's a huge difference in short term versus long term, and we described that in that one paper that we discussed on energy balance podcast. I think it's called mitochondria as key components of the stress response. So I'll dig into those episodes. But he kind of explains a little bit here of what his perspective is, which is that insulin is putting the brakes on the release of stored energy. So what he's saying is that glucig. On causes the release of stored energy, or we should just say fuel, because it's not energy, but it causes the release of fuel from the fat stores. And insulin opposes that, which is true that's very different from the effects on the metabolic rate. And I don't know if he explains this later, but it's worth maybe it's worth mentioning. Now, insulin stimulates glucose metabolism like it is. It has direct effects on various enzymes in glycolysis to stimulate the usage and uptake of glucose, like that's its whole purpose. I mean, one of its main purposes is to drive down the stress hormones. Another one is to stimulate the use of glucose, to stimulate glucose metabolism. So it's definitely not a break on metabolism, but he's right that it is a break on the stress hormones, and what the stress hormones do, which is the release of stored fueled, activating gluconeogenesis, impairing thyroid hormone conversion, things like that. So I think that's where some of the maybe confusion is here.

Danny  1:30:57  
Yeah, well said, yeah. It also clears the blood of free fatty acids and so again, this is kind of what we were talking about earlier. Like, not not only would it have all those those effects you just mentioned, but probably side effects, like running on glucagon and adrenaline, like people don't tend to feel very good when those hormones are elevated. Do you want me to read this? Glucagon is central to diabetes?

Jay Feldman  1:31:20  
Yeah, I guess so. Mike, you didn't want to throw anything in there?

Mike  1:31:24  
 I mean, it's the the perspective is just, it's just a very weird interpretation of how those things work, like it's it he, like, mentions all these different pieces, but they're not unified altogether. Like he just kind of throws in these different components, as if it's like, this is what this thing does, but not understanding why, or, like, what, the how it's working all together. It's like, it's like, yes, the the fat, the fat stores are over full, so now you have some degree of insulin resistance. And then he's, like, talking about it from the perspective, is, like, it's a problem with glucagon or insulin. But the biggest issue is that you actually have a metabolic problem at the cell. And I think that's the central thing to focus on, where you have a metabolic problem overall, and then these things are trying to adaptively respond to that overarching metabolic problem. It's not like the glucagon is trying to the insulin is trying to hold back the the substrate from leaking out, and then glucagon is trying to push the substrate out. It's more like what you're seeing in diabetic states or issues with imperative glucose tolerance, is that the cells are not uptaking the substrate, and they're signaling an energetic deficit, and then what you wind up happening is an increase in gluconeogenesis. So it provides substrate for this energetic deficit, but the cells are not able to effectively use it, so it's this weird limbo of we can't take things up. So we need more insulin to try to push it in, but we also, like we're signaling that we need more substrate, so we're up regulating glucagon, adrenaline, cortisol, simultaneously. And it's like you can try to it's more about correcting that key underlying dysfunction, metabolic dysfunction, than it is in this weird way of looking at the different hormones. And I think that that is, if you look at it through that lens and understand it from a metabolic problem in terms of what's going on in the cell, then it changes the perspective entirely. And that's why I think the analogy is incorrect, and it leads to these weird interpretations. It's like trying it's trying to understand it through this analogy, instead of understanding the actual process and forming the analogy from that process directly.

Jay Feldman  1:33:29  
Yeah, and there's two really important things that you touched on, Mike. So one, he regards the root cause of diabetes. He says it's not an issue with carbohydrate metabolism, which isn't even the mainstream view. That would be our view. He says the root cause is really overfilling our fat fuel tanks beyond what our bodies are comfortable with. So the question is, that's not, I mean, that's not a root cause. That's a symptom, right? Fat gain is a symptom. What is he actually saying is causing fat gain? That's an interesting thing. And you know, what do you know impairing carbohydrate metabolism will cause fat gain? And I would say that is way more at a root than anything else. The other thing that he mentions is that he's making it sound as though glucagon is not a culprit here. And we cited several studies and went through a couple, but we cited more in the show notes of our episode, explaining that taking out glucagon actually helps to fix the situation. It actually relieves the insulin resistance, and it is not doing anything to that root cause that he's saying of overfilling our fat fuel tanks. Instead, what's happening is you take out the glucagon, and that leads to a release of the fat fuel tank. So what that means is a the over full fat fuel tanks, which, I don't know how many times I can say that before, terrible wording, but he's saying actually, just like, What is this? Just meaningless jargon, but because he's talking about body fat. So anyway, reducing the body like, if reducing, if the excess body fat was the root cause, then adjusting glucagon wouldn't do anything to solve the situation, but it does, and that's what we showed in those studies, any kind, any straw man's that in. This next section where he's like, oh, yeah, it does in rats, but it wouldn't do it in humans, because we humans...

Mike  1:35:06  
Because humans eat a crappy diet. Yeah, humans eat a crappy diet, which is, again, not the context that we're talking about. We're not saying go and wipe out glucagon with some type of, like, viral vector thing that they viral vector process, which they did in the in the rats, and then continue to feed people crappy diets like that. Is that is essentially what he's describing our argument to be, which is in not even close to what we were saying in any capacity. And then he argues against that. It's like, come on. Man,

Jay Feldman  1:35:37  
Yeah. And then consider so there's two other things here. So one is inhibiting glucagon. Glucagon production in humans does have an effect on weight loss. We see it with the semaglutide drugs. So again, not a fan of those, but we see it happening right now. The other thing is, we weren't just basing off the argument, basing the argument that glucagon is implicated in diabetes and insulin resistance, based on that one rat study, there was other studies in humans where you look at people who are more insulin resistant, less insulin resistant, the ones who are more insulin resistant have increased glucagon. You cause insulin resistance. I mean, there's, there's many lines of evidence, and he straw man's it again, as this like one rat study that we're talking about, but I think we cite between like six and 10 papers in those show notes. I don't remember, but they're worth reading through for anyone who's actually interested in understanding these things, and so they actually draw a clear implication of glucagon in the state. And as you said, Mike, it's because, just like we talked about in the what is stress section, the production of glucagon a stress hormone is a reflection of an energy deficiency. And you have energy deficiencies in insulin resistance because you're not effectively utilizing carbohydrates, you can't convert them to energy properly, which is what causes the chronic stress state. That is what drives the glucagon issues. You see this very clearly in in some resistant states, excess fat oxidation, impaired glucose metabolism, and if you fix that, you then resolve the issue. And so I guess we can read this next part where, you know, I kind of jumped into it, but where he kind of strawmans and mentions the this hypothetical thing about if they continue to feed the rats hyper palatable foods that wouldn't work, even though rat diets are soybean oil and and sucrose. Anyways.

Mike  1:37:15  
Yeah, the other thing I want to just briefly add on, just really quick, is that the metabolic issue is also driving the fat gain. It's not like you just get fat and then you get diabetic. If anything, there's quite a few diabetics who are not even fat, or at least obese or something like that. Like the general idea that people tend to think you have a metabolic dysfunction. I'm talking about type two diabetics directly. This is different than type one, but you have a metabolic dysfunction and that drives the fat gain. It's like, you're developed. You're becoming fat as you become more metabolically impaired, because all of your substrate is not being oxidized and used. It's being rerouted into into into fat storage, or into muscle tissue or whatever, whatever the deal is the body's like, what are we doing with this substrate? We can't turn it into energy. And all the cells are screaming, like, we need energy, please. We need energy. And the body's like, okay, like glucagon, make some make some glucose. And so then you see, like these, we'll get in more to it. But I wanted to make that piece very clear, because it's not because I think a lot of people, oh, you're just fat. So if you lose weight, you won't be, you won't be diabetic anymore. It's like, yes, losing weight will be helpful for your blood glucose regulation and all these other things. That's That's true. However, it like, that's also the whole piece to consider is, why are you gaining the weight in the first place? Is there metabolic dysfunction? It's likely that there's metabolic dysfunction because gaining weight is normal. If you are, if you're eating more than your body is going to oxidize. It'll put some of that into storage. And that doesn't necessarily mean that that's pathology. That's there's two different situations where just gaining weight because you're eating more, versus like you are moving towards a diabetic state. They can cross over. There's Association, but I it's important to make that delineation, because a lot of people just, you just just lose weight, as if, like, that's the only strategy to solve the problem, and if that's easy for those people to do in these states,

Danny  1:39:08  
but, but if, if we follow what you said, Wouldn't that also explain the overeating, the perceived lack of glucose, the lack of glycogen, then a person would be drawn to the lack of energy? Yeah, exactly. Just explained it, the lack

Mike  1:39:21  
of desire to work out, the lack of desire to move around and do things, are directly tied to not having enough energy at the cell Yeah, yeah. So that's why, that's why those solutions don't for a lot of people, are so hard because it's like, they don't have energy. They are hungry, and they are they're gaining weight, regardless of this or that, or this or that, and it's because, like the whole you have to you take a substrate and you convert it into energy. You eat food, your body refines that fuel, or refines the substrate into a fuel that you can use, breaks everything down to simple components, and your cells convert it to energy. But if there's a problem in any of those pathways, whether digestively or. Whether that's conversion energy, then a whole bunch of systems that are trying to regulate that get all messed up, and part of the stress hormones are very key in that, because the stress hormones drive fatty acid oxidation and drive metabolic, I guess, derangements, if they are chronically upregulated as part of the adaptive response.

Danny  1:40:22  
Jay, we're almost approaching 30 minutes. Did you do? Were there some highlights that we have not talked about, that you wanted to go

Jay Feldman  1:40:28  
let's just, I think, because we've already talked through a lot of the main points, so I think after this will just be kind of quickly glossing over things. But I do, let's, let's try to read through some of these highlighted points and see, where it takes us. Want to start here well, so we already summarized that section, I guess, right. So he says that we reference studies in mice. He ignores all the other studies. It looks like there's eight of them that we, that I cited, and we already, yeah, we already mentioned that kind of really weak argument he mentioned, I so, yeah, let's go into the into the energy. Just

Mike  1:41:08  
go into the Jay Feldman argues that bioenergetic that gluconeogenesis raises glucagon and is inefficient and stressful for the body.

Jay Feldman  1:41:17  
Well, let's just pull up his I just want to mention his one straw man right before that, where he's he contrasts us with the the insulin toxicity people, where he says, on the other side of the spectrum, people on the high carb side, fear monger others into believing that glucagon is the root cause of everything bad. Like that's not what we're saying. And then his his retort to that is, but your body is not dumb. It's actually highly efficient and intelligent. Your pancreas doesn't know this was the this was like a written from nutrition with Judy. Your pancreas doesn't waste precious energy to make more insulin or glucagon than required to respond to the foods you eat and keep the energy within your blood in tight range. I don't know where people get this idea that there's, like, a lot of energy required to produce insulin or glucagon like they're basic peptides. Just totally, I mean, this is totally irrelevant to our to our argument, but again, just some, some weird straw man thing is saying that your body is dumb and over create over producing glucagon and wasting energy doing it.

Danny  1:42:15  
Yeah, like the authors feigned insight to the metabolic processes of the body.

Mike  1:42:22  
Yeah, he directly knows the pancreas, very personally. They have, like, a close, a close relationship. They go out to drinks on Friday night.

Danny  1:42:30  
Well, the funny thing is, like, like, I almost never hear people talk about glucagon. That's like, probably one of the least like hormones, like ever talked about in the rape like, I honestly think maybe your guys's podcast, and it occasionally comes up in ours, but it's not a hormone that's talked about very often. I know Ambro Hearn was saying that that's the reason that a low carb or carnivore person does not dip right into their cortisol. She was saying, Well, you know, it is, it's glucagon that's doing that, but that's, that's part of the degenerative stress response as well.

Mike  1:43:02  
So, well, yeah, it's like a layering process, right? Because your body has, as you kind of talked about before, Danny, your body has layers that it goes through. It doesn't just want to rack up cortisol, it wants to hit glucagon, and then glucagon, adrenaline, and then you get into the longer term stress response, because you do have glycogen stores that you can move through and whatnot before you have to start drastically up regulating, like tissue breakdown to make amino acids. So yeah, but it's, it doesn't whether it's glucagon or cortisol. It's still all part of the stress system. It's still, it's still all a signal of your body, like you don't have enough exogenous substrate coming in to create energy, and so you have to move into this process, pretty much all the stress hormones. You move into a process where you are liberating some type of substrate from your stores. You are breaking down your structure to some extent in order to produce substrate for energy. So it's like if you take Ray's hypothesis, and you're thinking there, okay, well, energy and structure are interdependent at every level. Then you have the implication that if I have more structure, I can generate more energy. And then this general idea comes like, let's just degrade our structure to produce energy. It's like, it is can completely counter to that entire philosophy. So it's a and then when you look in the research, you start to see like, Okay, well, there's excess glucagon in in glucagon, adrenaline, cortisol, etc, and all of these dysfunctional states. And we know there's problems with fatty acid oxidation, and they're all driving that. And so it's like, it's hard to like, then look and say like, Oh, these things are it's not that bad, or that it's good. It's like, well, you're selecting for it with low carbohydrate diets. You're literally selecting for these things.

Jay Feldman  1:44:48  
Hey Danny, I'm thinking, let's, let's skip the Do you really want to maximize your energy efficiency? One, because he doesn't actually make any he just, like, kind of lays out a basic view of raised thing, but doesn't raise views, but doesn't have any response. To it. So why don't we just do the too much gluconeogenesis can be bad. And then we'll go to the how to balance your blood sugar.

Danny  1:45:06  
Got it, got it. Got it. In his podcast, Jay Feldman argues that gluconeogenesis raises glucagon and is inefficient and stressful for the body. To some extent. I agree with this, but context is critical. So if your goal is this the very next thing, or, yeah, yeah, no.

Jay Feldman  1:45:21  
There's like, a couple of lines in between, but they are, I don't think they really said anything. Got it so if

Danny  1:45:25  
your goal is to maximize satiety, I mean, we should just interject here and say that this is, like, ridiculous. But anyway, you're probably don't want to drop your net carbs below 10% of calories, but at the same time, there's no need to drown yourself in honey and fruit to avoid gluconeogenesis at all costs. You'll, you'll just overfill your glucose fuel tank and down regulate fat oxidation.

Mike  1:45:53  
Oh, is the point? This

Danny  1:45:55  
is like, I mean, I know a lot of people have this hypothesis, but I mean, just in light of everything that's going on, it just seemed like your main goal is to make sure you're not hungry. He gave us, speaking of Han Selig, he said one of the first signs of being sick was losing your appetite. And I think our buddies that I analyze and optimize, they talked about a person's appetite, they were interconnecting with serotonin, but basically explaining how alive a person is, like, you should have a appetite for carbohydrate, like, if you didn't, that would mean that you're running on these adaptive kind of life subtracting substances,

Mike  1:46:38  
yeah. But Danny, I can wake up in the morning and I don't have to eat until 8pm great. It's so efficient, which reminds me we're eating cold, but it's efficient.

Jay Feldman  1:46:48  
Well, we missed that in Brian Johnson's routine. I think he's also doing 16 hour fast daily. So I can throw that. How is

Mike  1:46:56  
he getting all those? Oh, it's an eight hour window. Yeah,

Jay Feldman  1:46:59  
yeah, but yeah. So the first part here, you said that we argue. Well, me not you, Mike, that gluconeogenesis raises glucagon and is inefficient and stressful. That's backward. So the process of gluconeogenesis is driven by the stress hormones, glucagon will mostly raising glycogenolysis, not as much gluconeogenesis, but you will get that if you go deeper into adrenaline cortisol. But so that's just backward, although he agrees with it, so that's fine. And then I guess his context is that you don't want to fully avoid gluconeogenesis at all costs, because then inherently, you have to overfill your glucose tank and down regulate fat oxidation. So Don't Drown yourself in honey and fruit. And I mean, obviously, again, he's being hyperbolic, just because he needed something to create some argument to to respond to that wasn't ours. But I do think it's a good idea to avoid the stress processes to the extent that you can in a healthy way. And that involves avoiding gluconeogenesis. It's much better to use to get glucose from your diet than it is to produce it from amino acids or glycerol, background, backgrounds, or whatever it is, and that is at least in part, because those are have to be driven by stress hormones. And the reason for that is because inefficient gluconeogenesis, you lose 30% of the of the total energy from like the glucose oxidation that you would get by requiring the process prior of converting it from some other substrate. So it's inefficient, which is why it's not favored. It's why it's disfavored. It's why it requires stress hormones in order to enact it, because it's a part of that backup pathway, which is good that we have. Again, we're not saying it would be better off if you couldn't do this, you would die pretty easily. Like it's good to have these things. That doesn't mean that you want to be jacking up your cortisol all the time. And I don't think he thinks that either. So again, it's just a straw man. Also, you don't need to overfill your glucose tank, if you want to think of it that way. All you need is to provide the amount of carbohydrates that you need. You don't need to have excess amounts. Why would I don't know how that's relevant, and in terms of down regulating fat oxidation. I mean, yes, if you're right, if you're increasing glucose oxidation, it will take the place of some amount of fat oxidation. It's not 100 and zero, but yeah, that is part of the point, because encouraging fat oxidation encourages things like insulin resistance, type two diabetes, fatty liver disease. Look at the metabolism of what goes on in those states, and you see increased lipolysis, increased glucagon, increased fat oxidation. The whole idea is that we don't want to go in that direction. And if you reverse those things, you reverse the pathology.

Mike  1:49:25  
yeah, the stress form. The other thing too is at this Go ahead. Dan, go ahead. Mike, no, no, it's good. I was gonna say an at the cell. That is the problem that's already going on. You already having a large amount of ROS generation and change in the NADH and FADH two, and then NAD to NADH ratios, because you're driving high amounts of lipolysis and beta and fatty acid oxidation. So it's like your The goal is to not encourage that. The goal is to, like, minimize that and move back to oxidizing carbohydrate. Effectively, it's like every single state of a state of dysfunction stress that i. Eddies, metabolic syndrome, obesity, etc, etc, etc. Heart disease are characterized by these type by these metabolic issues, like you're seeing them in each one of these states, even, even, even some of the cancer things. There's some research basically showing that it's characterized by Weird changes. The title is literally about weird changes in fatty acid oxidation inside the cancer cell. People, oh, it's glucose. It's glucose. It's like, no, that's actually an issue with beta with beta oxidation, and that drives reactive oxygen species, which some people argue is beneficial for signaling. But I just did a video on this recently. If it really depends on how much Ros is generated, how that ROS is being generated, and where that ROS is being generated in the mitochondria, because where it's being generated and how much it's being generated is basically signaling to the cell how the ROS is being generated. Is it being generated? Because you have a bunch of ATP, and then the and you're like, you're saturated with energy, so it's kind of slowing things down a bit, because you're the cell is in a good state? If that's the case, fine, but if are you generating Ros, because you're you're having a bunch of fatty acid oxidation, and that's that's dampening the process overalls as a way to slow down the metabolic rate because you don't have enough substrate coming in, well, that's the whole entire different context and story. So it's really important to know why and what's going on.

Danny  1:51:20  
I was just going to throw in what you guys have already said, that the fat mobilizing hormones are the same ones that liberate fat, or that the stress hormones are the ones that promote lipolysis. Okay, Jay, what else? Yeah,

Jay Feldman  1:51:33  
well, let's we can skip this section. He doesn't really say anything, and then we can go to the end where he essentially agrees with us. We can just read that real quick.

Danny  1:51:43  
In the podcast, Jay Feldman mentioned that people on a lower carb diet tend to see a higher fasting glucose because gluco because glucagon output and gluconeogenesis increase overnight. This is correct and common pattern we see in our data driven fasting challenges. However, it is not necessarily, necessarily a bad thing based on the type of macronutrients you prefer to get your energy from, ie fat or carbs, your blood glucose may tend to be higher or lower at different points throughout the day, waking glucose tends to be higher for people on a low carb diet. This is because during the day, their bodies use up glucose, which is not directly replenished with diet, once their glucose drops as they proceed with activity as the day goes on, the DDF app will encourage them to use fewer carbs to bring their glucose back into normal range. And then just those, don't, I don't even know what. Oh, go ahead. Good.

Jay Feldman  1:52:36  
Well, just to round this out. So he then has his bullets of what he actually suggests. And so he says moderate amounts of strategic carbs can be helpful to bring your glucose back into the normal range when they drop too low. And then at the end, he says, you can, you can use glucose to ensure your to ensure your glucose doesn't fall so low that you trigger your body's stress response with excessive cortical cortisol and glucan release like that. Sounds awful. Sounds like that's a basic exact argument we were putting forth, which is that you want to consume carbohydrates to avoid glucagon and cortisol releases from your blood sugar dropping too low and earlier. He says that he agrees that low carb diets will increase stress hormones, which isn't just glucagon, it'll often increase cortisol and adrenaline as well. He says, however, it's not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't provide any backing for that or why we shouldn't be concerned about that, turning down, you know, thyroid hormone conversion, driving insulin resistance, reducing steroid hormone, you know, sex hormone production, the arguments that we made in our podcast episode, like, he doesn't actually ever talk about those and and then also, There's just that part where you said waking glucose is higher on a low carb diet, because during the day, people use their bodies use of glucose. It's missing the larger point there, which is that there's you're not providing glucose to use, so your body has to still use some glucose and relies on stress hormones in order to provide that, which is exactly what we're saying, and even he is saying you shouldn't allow to happen. That's what he said in that last point. Like you don't want to let your body, your body, produce its own glucose using cortisol and glucagon. So, yeah, it i It sounds like he really just agreed with us and like, for the most part, and wanted to create a exciting article,

Danny  1:54:23  
accomplishment. It's

Mike  1:54:23  
weird too, because he says it's not a bad thing,

Jay Feldman  1:54:27  
right? Yeah, but he still says, you want to avoid it later,

Mike  1:54:31  
yeah, that's what I that's what I don't get. It's like, you're literally, you're this whole thing that they're generating, this whole app in process is about managing your blood sugar and having it at an appropriate level. And they're talking about like, like, multiple times. He mentions, but you your pre meal blood sugar is super important. And it's like you're fasting. Blood sugar is rising. It's like that is literally a sign of of of insulin resistance directly, because you don't have any carbohydrates or meals, meal coming in, and your weight. Up and your your blood sugar is high in the morning. Like it's, yeah, it's so counter. It's literally, that's what I'm saying. Like he's makes a point and he contradicts it with other points throughout the article,

Jay Feldman  1:55:13  
and his one of his other basic premises, which I don't know, like, what his point of view is in terms of health and where he's coming from, but you can kind of get an idea when in that first bullet point, he says we need enough protein and nutrients from our diet without excess energy. So it sounds like he's kind of in that Ted Naiman camp of you want to maximize satiety, minimize calories by maximizing protein, and get nutrients as if carbs and fat are bad because they provide energy. And obviously it's about as opposite as you can get, from our perspective, but this article didn't talk about that at all. If you look at the part where he says, Do you really want to maximize your energy efficiency, he doesn't explain it at all. Why? He doesn't think it's the case. He just said he, like, kind of made a basic explanation of Ray's view, and then said, I think he has a few good principles, but didn't explain anything he disagrees with. I mean, it's just, yeah, I don't. I don't have anything else to say.

Mike  1:56:05  
Yeah, I'm done too.

Danny  1:56:07  
Okay, shall we move on to the tips and tricks section?

Mike  1:56:11  
Let's do it. Yes, we shall. Danny, okay, we'll

Danny  1:56:13  
switch back to this. Okay. Uh, Mike, what is your tip and trick for the week?

Mike  1:56:20  
So I just have one tip for the week. What I basically called it was the idea of habit stacking. And so essentially, the idea here is that instead of trying to do 10 things at once, or take a heavy lift at once, have one thing, break it into smaller pieces, and add it on one element at a time. And eventually what winds up happening is you can build out, like, nice lifestyle setups with people, diet, supplement, exercise, whatever the deal is, and coping strategies to manage stress that initially, if you present presented this, if like, with clients by presenting this, like, wow, that's a lot, and then maybe a couple weeks or months later they're doing it, and it's running on autopilot. And basically the ideas within this was that, first of all, a lot of people want to function on motivation, and motivation is actually not really long lived. It's like a couple days you're motivated, you do whatever you're going to do, and then after that, it's done. So you really want to be putting in systems that are sustainable for you, that you habits and routines, that you can just kind of run. The next thing is that if, anytime you you create a plan or you create a system, if it is too complex for your current setup, it doesn't matter, you won't do it. So you have to always think what is, what is ideal, and then what is feasible. And what is feasible is, I think the number one thing to shoot for, and I think a really important thing to consider here, is that maybe right now, you won't be able to execute this particular plan or do this type of thing, but as you as you make the first couple steps, and you make steps along the way, what you wind up finding is that you will become somebody who can do these things that you want to do into the future. So it's not like you, it's hard. Sometimes people look at things into the future and like, oh, I can't do that, but they don't consider that as they move toward that goal. They change along the way. And I think that that's super helpful, and that's why stacking habits, it can make things a huge difference overall. That's basically the gist of what I wanted to get out today. And kind of how this looks is that if you're going to add a supplement, you're going to test out a food, what you can do is just add this one thing, do it for maybe three or four days, five days, and then add the next thing, and just do that in that fashion, and focus that one thing at a time so that you can integrate it into your life. It could be a supplement. It could be an exercise piece. It could be walking. It could be changing your sleeps, your sleep schedule, etc, etc, etc.

Danny  1:58:38  
Yeah, my tip is pretty similar in that similar vein. But one of my favorite quotes is from Bucky Fuller, and he says something like, do more and more with less and less, until you can do everything with nothing. And so I think that's a powerful way of thinking about supplements and things. And so I think I talked to lots of people that similar to what Ray said in 1973 that he was known for getting people off their supplements, and I found basically the exact same thing to be true, as people are more choosy about what they're willing to ingest or put on their skin, it seems like it adds to a higher degree of stability. And I think that's that's a really beautiful thing, being stable and feel like you know what's going on, and that should be, really, I think, the goal and not to be in a state of chaos or total confusion, 24/7 and I think that's really easy to shift into when you're taking many, many different biological substances that are sometimes new, no idea what they're going to do, you know? And so I think that's a probably, I think it's actually even on Twitter, there's like two camps, almost. It's like Bulgarian pietism, kind of like inspired by Georgie. And this is totally joking, but more of an orthodox Ray view of simplicity, or risk aversion. And so I think, I think risk aversion is extremely. Important in this stuff, and it's way too easy to hurt yourself. And I could say that from many doing it, many, many, many times myself, you know. So I think, I think, I think simplicity, risk aversion and being choosy with the supplements and foods and things is important, but it's not often. What I see when people got to get into this stuff, they're taking like, 10 or 20 supplements or something, and it seems like total chaos. What do you think? Jay,

Jay Feldman  2:00:26  
yeah, no, I definitely agree. And my tip was related and more so on the front of what might drive somebody to away from that, or toward being less cautious and toward trying a bunch of things all at once. And so my tip is basically to work on keeping a long term mindset as opposed to a short term mindset. And this is something that we want to keep in mind when it comes to any symptom that we're dealing with. I mean, I see this quite often with clients, whether it's weight and wanting to see quick weight loss in a short period of time. It's a very common one. It can also be things like low energy or fatigue, sleep issues and any of these situations. When we try to go for the short term mindset, we look for those quick fixes. We do the short term diet. We use whatever it is to, you know that that helps us fall asleep in the moment, sometimes with a long term cost. It's not that there's never a place for band aids. I don't want to make it, make it sound like that. I think if you're not sleeping day to day, it can help to use something even if it's not ideal to get to sleep, but especially more with something like weight or other symptoms, the more we can kind of keep that calm, long term mindset at play. And I think something that can help there is just keeping in mind the idea that when we're doing something that's sustainable and actually oriented toward health. It's this should be the last time that we have to do it. It shouldn't be a situation where you're doing the short term diet or this thing that makes you feel a little bit bad, but it's okay, because it's only for a month or two, and you need it to be quick, you know, so you get that result real quick. Instead, what we're trying to do is create something that's sustainable and can be a lifelong thing that's comfortable, makes you feel good in every way, and also has those benefits that you're looking for in terms of these symptoms. And so, whether we're talking yo yo dieting, or we're talking about the person who is looking on the forums and looking at, you know, looking up any article and finding this one compound that should solve their issue, or this one mechanism that's underlying their issue, and they try to bring in every supplement possible to reverse that. Those things tend not to work long term. It tends not to actually get at the underlying problem, and it kind of encourages that black and white thinking, as opposed to the idea of just making slow progress over time, building habits and again, still using band aids when appropriate, and everything, but doing things that are going to work long term, as opposed to something that might give you a short term result and then often backfires and leads to the constant cycle that gets people in these positions in the first place.

Danny  2:02:52  
Amazing with that, the first A bioenergetic view episode is in the can and Mike, where can we find more of your work on the internet this

Mike  2:03:01  
week? Yeah, awesome. You can, guys can find me on my YouTube channel, Mike, Fave science, and you can find me on the energy balance podcast. And Jay,

Jay Feldman  2:03:11  
my website is Jay Feldman wellness.com and then Mike and I do a podcast called the energy balance podcast.

Danny  2:03:16  
You can find me on Danny roddy.substack.com and t.me/danny Roddy is the telegram, hey guys, appreciate it through all the technical errors. Fantastic show. Really appreciate you guys bearing with me, looking forward to the next one, and amazing. Really, really happy about how this went. And we have an amazing listenership, I'm sure, carry over our audiences and let us know what we can improve on, what's good, what's bad. And this show is highly malleable and will probably change over time, but we're really excited about it, and we're up for any of your constructive feedback. Thanks, everybody. Thanks. Jay, thanks, Mike, talk to you guys soon and peace out.